I saw a bit of aviation history today!

[Andy Perreault]

I saw one of British Airways' Concordes on its final flight today. It flew right over the Seattle-Tacoma Int'l Airport, coming from the north, and then turned to the east and banked to the north to line up for its approach to Boeing Field from the south. If I had a camera with me, I could have gotten a shot of it with Mt. Rainier in the background. Of course, it would have just been a speck in the picture without a big telephoto lens, and Mt. Rainier was kind of blending in with the haze, so it wouldn't have been that spectacular of a shot, but still, it was an awesome sight. I was at work at the SeaTac (SEA) airport, so I didn't get to watch it land at BFI, but I got a pretty good view of it. SeaTac is on a hill, and when planes are landing from the south at BFI, I can look almost horizontally at them.

BA donated the plane to the Boeing Museum of Flight, and it will be open for tours soon. Here's a news article about it:

http://www.komotv.com/stories/28153.htm

That article mentions that it set a new speed record from New York to Seattle. It got the okay to go supersonic one last time!

Check out these pictures that have already shown up on Airliners.net:

http://www.airliners.net/open.file/453099/L/

http://www.airliners.net/open.file/453107/L/

http://www.airliners.net/open.file/453102/L/

http://www.airliners.net/open.file/453050/L/

Check out all the heat waves from the engines in that second picture!

Anyway, it was really something to watch it fly.

Andy



edit: looks like Airliners.net has some sort of restriction, I couldn't post one of the above pictures here. You'll have to click on the links.

 

[Fireman Dave]

That's cool, Andy. Thanks for the links.