The Concorde Project - A personal account by Alan Palmer

What is or was the Concorde project?

1984 was the 50th anniversary of the Mildenhall to Melbourne air race. A committee was formed to celebrate this event. Rotary and other organisations were asked to organise their own events.

On the 1st July 1984 Fred Bonnett became Rotary President. Maurice Bashford became the Chairman of the Community Service Committee. At the Mildenhall air display in May 1984, Concorde had flown from Gatwick to take part in the display. Concorde was so low as it wheeled over Mildenhall that I could see the passengers. At that point I decided that I would somehow arrange a flight on Concorde.

So when Maurice asked for ideas, I immediately said to hire Concorde. Within 24 hours Maurice was back having made contact with British Airways. We could have a Concorde on Monday 22nd October 1984 for £40,000! We had 16 weeks to organise the event.

Maurice put the idea to the club and asked for a sub-committee to be set up. This committee comprised of Maurice, Bill Abbs, Ray Turner and myself. A proposal was made and approved that up to £300 be made available to the sub-committee for advertising. It had been established that the contract with B.A. need not be signed until we were confident that funds were available to cover the contract. There was therefore no liability to the club at any stage.

The sub-committee was reduced to 3 when Ray Turner was admitted to hospital and we agreed to meet on a daily basis. It was felt that to maximize our profit, three flights should be arranged (2 sub-sonic and 1 supersonic). When the project became public a large amount of free publicity was obtained from the newspapers. To stimulate more interest we gave two tickets to the Cambridge Evening News as prizes for a Concorde competition.

We gave two tickets to district to raffle at the conference and we circulated all Rotary Clubs within district 108. Suddenly tickets started to sell and 10 days before the flight we moved past the £40,000 mark and agreed to sign the contract. At Gatwick airport, President Fred and I as Treasurer committed this club to paying £40,000. Well, to be truthful we paid £37,300, £2,700 being discount for paying in advance!

By now we were advertising on T.V. and had one slot during the football half-times on a Saturday afternoon. One problem which existed but for which verbal assurance had been given by the base to Jack Haylock concerned landing at Mildenhall. 8 days before the flight, the base made it clear that it was not intending to approve the flights. Stanstead were prepared to accept the flights as a solution but it was felt it would not be the same as landing at Mildenhall.

Maurice resigned from the club and advised the base that the facts would be released to the National Press at 4:00pm on Monday 15th October. During lunch on Monday 15th October Jack Haylock received a telephone call asking Maurice to take no action until a General from the Pentagon arrived. He arrived at Maurices's office at 4:15pm on 15th October with permission to land at Mildenhall. Maurice ripped up his resignation.

The day of the flight was utter chaos. Morley's Grey Coaches were an hour late delivering the first passengers to Heathrow. Instead of arriving at Mildenhall at 10:30am, the first flight landed at 12:30pm. The Gibraltar flight took off at 1:30pm for an hour and a half flight. It returned at 5:30pm! after refuelling at Stanstead as the USAF refused to supply fuel at Mildenhall. The Evening flight left for Heathrow at 7:30pm and we disembarked at 8:30pm. Concorde should have left for New York at 6:00pm!

We made a profit of some £7,000 (plus the district raffle of some £600 for foundation), most of which was put on deposit and has only just been spent. With the benefit of hindsight we would have done many things differently. The more expensive tickets sold more readily. Two more expensive flights would have given more profits. A loudspeaker van touring the area would probably have sold several tickets on the day. 16 weeks for the project was probably too tight, although it kept the momentum going.

Outstanding memories for me were the detail of the town seen from the plane, I could see my own car in my driveway and the sheer power of take off.

After the flights we invited the 3 guests to a thank you lunch at which we gave them decanters and glasses. Totally unbeknown to Maurice, the Community Service Committee had arranged for an enlarged photo to be framed with each committee member writing his own piece. Jack Haylock wrote "I am speechless".

Another amusing incident took place on T.V. Maurice, Bill and I had discussed the likely questions to be put. We concluded that probably the interviewer would ask how we intended to spend the profit. Indeed the interviewer did ask this question and in a broad cockney dialect Maurice replied; "In Suffolk we do not count our chickens before they are hatched".

Memories recorded by Alan Palmer November 2001.