A flight of fancy

Adam hands Mary her Concorde ticket.

Working Lunch was in the fortunate position of having a spare ticket on one of the last Concorde flights between New York and London.

And what better way to use it than to treat Mary O'Neill to her first flight on the supersonic aircraft.

It's perhaps surprising that Mary hadn't been on it before because she was involved in its design.

"In the late 1950s I was working at The Royal Aeronautical Society investigating transonic aerodynamics - the boundary between subsonic and supersonic flow," Mary e-mailed us.

Early design work was all done by hand

"The result was the beautiful wing shape on a beautiful aircraft.

"These were the embryonic days of Concorde and I am proud that my small input helped towards the final design."

When Adam visited her at her home in Kent, Mary explained how she'd got into the industry and recalled how in those pre-computer days, everything had to be drawn by hand.

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She also gave him a potted explanation of how aircraft manage to stay in the air!

But she admitted she'd never actually flown on Concorde, something which she regretted.

Mary and Adrian check in

"I've never been on a mock-up even. It is a shame - I would have loved to have gone," she said.

So it was an enormous pleasure to give Mary the news that she would be Working Lunch's guest on one of the final flights.

Of course, there's a downside to everything - the bad news was that Mary would be flying from New York to London with Adrian!

Champagne in one hand, Adrian's in the other (he's not a good flyer) Mary relished the experience.

Mary joins the crew in the cockpit

"It's noisier than I expected but it's incredibly smooth," said Mary.

"The take-off was terrific - I enjoyed that!"

She'll have plenty of photographic memories of her day - she even took a picture of Concorde's toilet; apparently her daughter collects them.

But above all, she saw it as an honour - that as one of the many small cogs who contributed to the building of the aircraft, she had been given the privilege of flying on it before its demise.

"It was very emotional - I didn't think it would be," she admitted.