BA To Operate 20 Concorde Flights In Final Week By Steve Lott October 20, 2003 British Airways, preparing for intense press coverage of the final week of Concorde operations featuring 20 farewell flights, will soon unveil the final resting places of its five remaining models that are still flying. The carrier last Tuesday finished its three-city North American "farewell tour" with a Concorde flight from London Heathrow to Washington Dulles. BA is now gearing up for 20 individual flights between Oct. 18 and Oct. 24, the final day of service. During the week, Concorde will carry up to 2,000 passengers, a weekly record for Concorde during its 27 years in service. Unlike Air France, which quietly retired its last Concorde in the spring, BA all summer has held flashy, global promotions and contests for trips on the final flights. The last flight on which customers could buy seats was BA001 from Heathrow to New York Kennedy on Oct. 23, but it has already sold out, executives said. BA002, flying from New York to London, is for invited guests and will carry mostly executives, VIPs and television reporters. In addition to the final week's transatlantic flights, more than 1,000 contest winners and guests will be a part of a U.K. farewell tour taking Concorde to Birmingham, Belfast, Manchester, Cardiff and Edinburgh, capped with a series of three farewell supersonic flights on Oct. 24, arriving from New York, Edinburgh, and a circular tour over the Bay of Biscay. The plan is to have all three Concordes land in succession on Heathrow's north runway. While BA did not corroborate it, sources said BA will start taking its Concordes out of service next week. Barring last-minute changes, aircraft G-BOAD will end its career at the Intrepid Air and Space museum in New York City. That same week, aircraft BOAC will go to the Manchester, U.K., Airport Viewing Park. In early November, BOAE will travel to Seattle with at least one refueling stop, to be donated to that city's Museum of Flight. It is believed that BOAG might be donated to a Barbados group with a final flight in November. Preliminary plans call for the last Concorde flight to be on Nov. 17, when BOAF -- the last Concorde ever built -- travels to Filton, near Bristol, U.K., where it would be the main feature at a proposed Filton Aviation Heritage Center. Filton is where the plane's Rolls Royce/SNECMA Olympus engines were tested and built. Roger EWROPS