Concorde's visits to Bournemouth Airport

Yesterday marked the 50th anniversary of the first flight of the British-built version of Concorde.

It would not begin passenger flights until 1976 and was withdrawn in 2003, as demand for air travel slumped and bargain fares became a higher priority than glamour.

Stephen Bath was responsible for organising Concorde’s visits to Bournemouth Airport when he was joint managing director of Bath Travel.

His father, Peter, had realised that the newly-extended runway at the Hurn site would be long enough to land the supersonic plane, providing the opportunity to organise a unique pleasure trip.

On April 21, 1996, 100 people were taken to Heathrow by coach and given a 20-minute flight on Concorde back to Bournemouth. Another 100 took off later for a champagne lunch over the Atlantic before landing at Heathrow.

The 200 seats had sold within three hours of the Echo revealing the plans for the event, dubbed Big Nose Day.

There were around 25,000 people in the area to see Concorde arrive, including 5,000 on the airport site.

Mr Bath told why he thought so many people turned out to glimpse the famous plane. “First of all, it’s a tremendous pride in British achievement, to build such an extraordinarily complex and technically capable aircraft,” he said.

“Also they were attracted by the beauty of seeing this little sportscar of a plane – it was really quite small – and to hear that noise of the Olympus engines and see the smoke and hear the sound.

“It was delta winged, but also it would fly at 1,350mph.”

Bath Travel later flew 4,400 passengers on 44 Concorde flights to places such as Paris, Nice, Venice and Tenerife.

“Although we had 25,000 people on April 21, 1996, for the next year or so there were never fewer than about 5,000 people turn up for a free air show,” said Mr Bath.

While Bournemouth Airport’s runway was not long enough for a fully-fuelled Concorde to take off for New York, a take-off was arranged from the Boscombe Down military airfield on Salisbury Plain.

“The biggest crowd we ever had after Big Nose Day was in 1997 when I came in myself from New York on the first transatlantic Concorde in July 1997,” said Mr Bath.

“No one else in the history of the world has got from New York to Bournemouth in three hours eight minutes,” he said.

Concorde began in 1962 as an Anglo-French project which Britain believed would help win it admittance to Europe’s Common Market.

Fourteen of the aircraft were eventually built and they became the favourite mode of transport for jet-setting celebrities and diplomats.

But the crash in 2000 of a French Concorde killed 113 people and the whole industry took a knock from the 9/11 attacks the following year.

Mr Bath thinks oil prices have put paid to the idea of building more supersonic passenger aircraft – especially since, in its first 45 seconds of flight, Concorde was burning fuel at the equivalent of a tonne every two minutes.