My Concorde inaugural flight - kind of

Concorde stories seem to be taking off in The Baron. Here’s one about how I came to be on its inaugural passenger flight back to London, and got an undeserved byline.

I was Reuters chief representative in the Gulf, based in Bahrain. The title was invented by management to impress Arab sheikhs who were just becoming vastly rich from oil. And it was to Bahrain that BA flew its maiden passenger flight of Concorde in late January 1976.

I had been busy covering a number of plane hijackings by Palestinian guerrillas - it was that era - and was glad to report on a kinder aviation development. I became fascinated by the history of British aviation in the Gulf, indulgently writing advance features about the romance of early flying boats, desert airstrips, and Trucial Oman Scouts.

 As a result, BA offered me a free seat along with Bahraini dignitaries on the same-day return inaugural leg to London. The manager for the Middle East, Shahe Gubenlian, said I could only accept it I met him for for business talks in Fleet Street and flew back to Bahrain the next day on a sub-sonic airliner courtesy of BA. 

Concorde: sleek and futuristic outside, likened to a London Tube inside. On the day, I wrote a curtainraising daylead from Bahrain. I went to the airport to meet the historic arrival of the first BA Concorde passenger flight, with Pat Massey, Reuters’ renowned fireman and wordsmith, on board. 

Pat wrote the main story and lead. His memorable intro was along the lines: “Flying at twice the speed of sound is like crossing the Equator, you do not feel a thing.”

The trip I did was surreal. We drank champagne all the way to Heathrow, where aviation buffs asked for our autographs at the VIP gate. Treated as one of the Bahraini delegation, BA had booked me into a suite at Claridges. 

I dropped my bag and rushed by taxi to Fleet Street to see Shahe Gubenlian. He kept wanting to discuss Reuter business in the Arab world, and failed to tell me until the end that Editorial had also wanted to see me.

They apparently needed a nightlead, which I assumed Pat was writing. They hadn’t briefed me beforehand. It turned out World Desk thought it was significant for the Reuter file to show a story reported by the same correspondent on the same day under datelines thousands of miles apart.

By the time I got there, someone on World Desk had written a fine nightlead from earlier and Press Association copy and put it out under my name. The change of dateline did look good on the file, but I felt a bit of a fraud.

I ducked out of an evening government reception at Lancaster House after leaving Fleet Street. I went to visit my Mum in North London. She had seen our arrival on TV and paraded me before neighbours down the street like a conquering celebrity.

I caught up with others in the Bahraini delegation late that night on a visit to a sleezy Soho nightclub. It had apparently been arranged by BA’s PR department. After a few hours sleep at the hotel, I asked where I could get a bottle of cow’s milk to take home to my family in Bahrain. We missed the taste in the Middle East. Being Claridges, a waiter brought me one wrapped in expensive gold tin foil. 

BA flew me back First Class with more free champagne in a Boeing passenger plane. It took more than seven hours - about double the time it took Concorde to do the 3,140 miles at supersonic speeds.

I arrived home exhausted and with a hangover. But a surprising boost came some days later with the arrival of Time magazine. It carried a picture of me on Concorde, sitting to the left of the editor of the Gulf Mirror. Like the nightlead, though, the attribution wasn’t correct. The caption was for the other leg. That’s journalism for you. ■