I went a couple of years ago, definatly worth a visit. There is normally someone there who will give you a guided tour of the facility if not you are invited to speak to any of the engineers they all seemed pretty friendly. I didn’t see anything fly during my visit to Cape Town but you never know! If you get a taxi there most drivers seem prepared to wait about an hour without charging you anymore although I always gave them a good tip. There are some F1 cars there as well as the jets but you may be a bit dissapointed if you want to buy some merchandise as they didn’t have anything at all when I was there. Guess your memento is supposed to be a trip in a jet!

P.S. Dont forget to post them piccies 😉 XP693 due to fly anyday now!

Great shots Glenn, Fantastic 🙂 😎

Sorry, cant help with the aircraft serial but she appears to be a 12 squadron kite. There strength at that time was :

XT274 / XT276 / XT286 / XT288 / XV165 / XV168 / XV334 / XV338 / XV341 / XV342

Hope this helps. 🙂

I some what doubt the money being spent on XL426 or similar would be spent on anything other than what it is. You have your money you take your choice. All this use the money for something else arguments are pointless.

There is a picture in the December 2005 edition of The Growler (published by The Shackelton Association) of a group of Squaddies sitting on XF700 at Nicosia taken in August 2005.

Whether we actually need to preserve the number of Concordes
there are in the U.K remains to be seen and if it diverts funds away from other aircraft
that need money spending on them is that for the best? Some would argue that they would rather see funds spent on securing the long term future of the Cosford Boeing 707 than a duplicated Concorde.

I would suspect that any Concorde displayed in a museum or attraction is going to bring in more revenue than is required to maintain it, in the short term at least. If any medium or large museum is to survive it needs to have an attraction that will bring in the general public, whether we like it or not joe public just want to see Spitfires, Lancasters, Vulcans, Harriers, Tornados or Concorde they couldn’t give a monkies if there was a Valetta there or not. By having one of these a museum can generate the additional income to indulge itself in some of the less glamorous aircraft it may have in it’s collection. It’s alright us banging on about the historical significance of just about every aircraft built but in reality the only reason we buy, save or volunteer to work with any of these aircraft is because we like them and we want everyone else to like them. If you look to far into the future then you will never be able to enjoy what we have today. Eventually this save everything that we like best hysteria that the country is in will have to stop as we run out of room to save everything. Of course many of the aircraft and museums that we have today will not be around at sometime in the future, thats obvious, lets just enjoy what we have at the moment. XL391 had a stay of execution of 23 years and no doubt many people have been grateful for that. Had the owner not brought it when he did it would have almost certainly been scrapped. It’s a shame she went the way she did but she was the owners property and we have no god given right to tell anybody what to do with their possesions, we may not like it but thats life.

I saw this over Cambridge a couple of weeks ago and just couldn’t believe what I was seeing! How does that helicopter manage to keep flying with all that drag etc underneath – that flag is huge!!

Thumbs up to the Air Atlantique boys – Well Done! 😎