The following Press release by the Save Concorde Group came in today (15/9/05):

Lembit Opik MP has already met with Airbus and we are awaiting a written response to the questions that were posed. British Airways are planning to meet with him towards the end of this month. We will then have a clearer idea of where we need to focus our attention.

At present we are calling on British Airways to sanction a full technical survey on a given airframe (216 at Filton) to determine the true figures for returning said airframe to flight. Until that is carried out no one individual or corporate body is able, we feel, to simply state that it is 'too expensive.' We are not asking British Airways to fund the survey either, but we do need their co-operation and support for that to be possible.

Our secondary objective is preservation, after all if the aircraft at Filton is not put under cover soon there will be no plane left to fly, and nothing to exhibit! We have called on Airbus (UK) as custodians of the plane at Filton to place pressure on the Bristol Aero Collection to speak with us with a view to us assisting them with fundraising for their new museum, estimated at £33M - current revenues suggest that this may take up to 40 years to achieve!

The objective of SCG is to have an airworthy Concorde making several flights a year, this would differentiate the City of Bristol as the only city in the world with an operational aircraft, this would be worth a small fortune in tourism to the city and the surrounding area, we should not think of Concorde as purely a British aviation icon, she is loved by millions of people round the globe, they would flock to Bristol in their thousands to see the most beautiful civil aircraft in the world in full flight.

Join the campaign, please e-mail Ross Mallett the Chairman of Save Concorde rossmallett@save-concorde.co.uk

The views expressed above are those of the Save Concorde Group.