To Bahrain for tea and back in a day

Brian Mooney’s tale of Mach-2 with Maggie is hard to beat. Like Trevor Goodchild, I too flew aboard Concorde to Bahrain. It was a year earlier, in 1974, on a proving flight before Concorde went into service with British Airways and Air France. Pat Massey covered the defence and aviation beat at that time but for some reason couldn’t make this junket so Allan Barker, London bureau chief, sent me. Exciting, to be sure, but it seemed not to be the most comfortable way to fly. The cabin was a thin tube - just two seats each side of the aisle which was so slender they had to make especially slim refreshment trolleys from which to serve the champagne and canapés. And the noise! As the engines revved to twice the speed of sound, conversation became difficult. We landed in Bahrain in the afternoon and stayed just long enough for tea and to take on fuel before reboarding for the return supersonic flight to Heathrow. ■