British Airways retired Concorde fleet October 24th 2003
Air France withdrew Concorde on June 27th 2003
Result of Operating problems and costs plus lack of passenger demand.
Concorde G-BBDG at Brooklands Museum UK
Ⓒ James Cullingham 2011
My office looked out to sea and towards Dubai Creek Entrance.
One morning I arrived at the office around 7am, looked out the window and saw this strange shape in the sky descending rapidly towards Dubai.
As it came closer I saw it was an Air France Concorde, its wheels down, nose cone in the droop position and about to land at Dubai Airport.This Air France Concorde was taking the French President François Mitterrand to Indonesia via Singapore.
Len Chapman
I discovered a colour slide in a box of my old slides.
I don't know if this Concorde is the one I saw from my office.My wife worked at Dubai Airport for BA and KLM and likely to have taken this photo from the steps of an adjacent aircraft.
But that is guesswork!I can't find any reference to Air France Concorde flying thro Dubai at any other time but who knows??!!
This aircraft, registered, as F-BTSD later returned to Dubai as part of a Pepsi Cola promotion
Len Chapman
On April 7, 1996, Air France Concorde registration number F-BTSD touched down at Dubai airport on a flying visit as part of a US$500 million international re branding campaign by Pepsi Cola, the US soft-drinks company that was battling to hold on to a declining market share.
In Dubai, Pepsi took 100 VIP guests on a supersonic joyride before the aircraft took off for the next leg of a month-long tour that also took in Paris, London, Dublin, Stockholm, Beirut, Jeddah, Cairo, Milan and Madrid. Painting the supersonic aircraft blue to match Pepsi's new branding was a technical challenge. Skin temperature was a vital factor for aircraft capable of flying at Mach 2.04 (2,140kph, more than twice the speed of sound) and all Concordes were rated for supersonic flight with only a white paint job.
Eventually, the Pepsi paintwork was approved, but only for the fuselage - the wings had to remain white because of concerns about fuel temperature. Another condition was that the aircraft should not be allowed to exceed Mach 2.02 for more than 20 minutes.
F-BTSD was one of 20 Concordes built between 1966 and 1979 by a joint French-British consortium - only 14 of which went into service, with Air France and British Airways halving the flight time between Paris and London and New York
–F-BTSD's days were numbered, along with those of the rest of the fleet, when sister aircraft F-BTSC crashed at Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport in July 2000, killing all 109 people on board and four on the ground. All Concordes were grounded for more than a year, but the crash spelt the end for the revolutionary aircraft, which flew commercially for the last time in 2003.
F-BTSD, which during its 25-year career flew almost 13,000 hours, made 5,135 landings and went supersonic 3,672 times, made her final flight on June 14, 2003. She is now in retirement at Le Bourget Air and Space Museum, Paris.
from an Article by Jonathan Gornall The National November 11, 2011
Fly Dubai by BA Concorde
Not quite - but almost!
For a short time British Airways offered their Dubai Customers to fly to and from Dubai on their Bahrain-London-Bahrain Concorde service. Customers had to buy a First Class Ticket so they flew First Class BA to Bahrain and then to London by Concorde.
At that stage British Airways were struggling make their Bahrain Concorde service profitable. Soon after that service closed, BA concentrated on their UK-US service.
Thereafter Concorde contributed some 25% of BA's profits for the next 25 years.
Records show that on 27th August 1974, British Airways Concorde 202 (G-BBDG) made a demonstration Middle East Tour, visiting Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Kuwait, Muscat and Dubai often referred to as "Hot Weather Trials".
