Scotland, 2020

ON TRAVELLING

Why I was a fool not to fly the Concorde

I don't have many regrets. An opportunity arises that requires an immediate decision. You don't give it much thought; you decide, and it ends up amiss. C'est la vie. 

But there is one decision that I have regretted all my life. It was in the mid-nineties in New York, on a layover from New Zealand.

When you are flying to the US from New Zealand, you arrive before you depart. Remember Bill Murray in the Groundhog Day movie? That's how you feel. 

Flying was great then; you dressed up for it. British Airways had onboard chefs in Business and First, crew members that remembered your name, and pilots that occasionally invited you to the cockpit for a chat.

Bute sundown, 2020

Ascog House, Landmark Trust, Bute

I was a BA Gold member for life—life at BA is limited to thirty-six months, I learned later—which meant checking in from a dedicated terminal at JFK. Airlines kept their distinguished passengers as far removed from the crowds as possible.

That's where I made my mistake. As I checked in, I was offered a seat on the Concorde to London for an extra seven hundred dollars. I refused. Even though a standard return cost 12,000 dollars at the time, I found seven hundred dollars too much.

I was an idiot. 

Moorland, beaches, and cloudy skies on Bute.

Mount Stuart House and Gardens in Bute is a flamboyant example of the 19th Century Gothic Revival Architecture

I first heard it on the radio in my car on July 25, 2000. A piece of titanium on the runway ruptured a tire on Concorde flight AF4590. Tyre fragments punctured its fuel tanks and set its engines on fire. The plane crashed minutes later, and no Concorde ever flew again.

I missed my chance to fly supersonic.

A few months later, I took my first Ryanair flight to Glasgow and didn't check the airport code. It landed at Prestwick, an hour's taxi drive from Glasgow. On board, I paid for coffee, dealt with the crew peddling scratchcards, and got my eardrums busted by clarions blaring an on-time arrival.

The age of no-frills flying had arrived with a bang. 

The Ruin, Landmark Trust, Grewelthorpe, Yorkshire

I spent my 1.5 million miles flying the family in first class to Mexico on Swissair for a holiday. We all dressed up for the flight. A week after our return, Swissair went bankrupt and restarted low-cost as 'Swiss'.

I wonder if they shortened the name to save on paint.