Branson steps up battle for Concorde
Virgin Airways tycoon Richard Branson was beginning the latest round of his battle today to revive Concorde.
Branson, who wants to stop the supersonic airliner being consigned to the scrap heap, was meeting officials from manufacturers Airbus in London in an effort to gauge the costs of running the plane.
British Airways plans to ground Concorde in October, saying it is no longer economically viable. Branson wants to persuade BA and the British government to allow Virgin to take control of the airliner.
“We will fight right up until October to keep Concorde flying, ” he said. “I think the British public is right behind us and we intend to keep the pressure on BA and the government.
“We’ll be meeting Airbus officials in an attempt to get an accurate idea of the cost of spares and so on and hopefully that will provide us with more ammunition in our campaign.
“Hopefully we’ll be able to embarrass BA into not scraping Concorde.
”I think we would consider flying it on routes to New York, the West Indies and possibly the Emirates. We’ll certainly keep fighting for it.”
