Concorde campaign takes flight

The Museum of Flight fancies one of the planes

MSPs have supported calls to bring one of the UK's seven Concordes to the Museum of Flight in East Lothian.

The attraction at East Fortune, near Haddington, is one of 30 museums across the globe asking British Airways (BA) to donate a Concorde.

John Home Robertson, MSP for East Lothian, staged a debate in parliament on Wednesday as part of the campaign to bring one of the supersonic planes to Scotland.

BA and Air France made simultaneous announcements last month that they would be permanently grounding Concorde this year.

Concorde grounded

The plane's wings were designed by a Scot, Sir James Arnot Hamilton, and the early test flights took place at Prestwick.

Concorde also flew over the Scottish Parliament when it opened in July 1999.

The only cloud in the sky is the cost of maintaining one of the planes - even as a museum piece - in the style to which it has become accustomed.

John Home Robertson is aiming high

In a statement last month, BA said Concorde would cease flying in the autumn because of "commercial reasons, with passenger revenue falling steadily against a backdrop of rising maintenance costs for the aircraft".

Passenger numbers have never recovered since a crash near Paris in 2000 and the aircraft no longer makes a profit.

A spokesman for BA said the company was determined the aircraft would go out in style.

The plane operates daily out of London Heathrow and Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport to North America.

'Jewel in the crown'

It cruises at 1350 mph and an altitude of up to 60,000ft (11 miles), which means a crossing from Europe to New York takes less than three-and-a-half hours.

Speaking before the debate, John Home Robertson said: "It will be a tragedy if such an exciting aircraft was simply to be scrapped.

"I'm delighted they're offering them to appropriate museums and the Museum of Fortune is the only one for Scotland."

He said it was "a wonderful site" which attracted 60,000 visitors a year and having Concorde would be the "jewel in the crown" of the museum's collection.