Concorde test flights to start ‘soon’
Test flights of the grounded British Airways Concorde airliners are set to start in the ‘‘very near future’’, the airline said today.
It refused to give a date but it is thought the first of the supersonic jets could take to the skies again as early as July 9.
The fleet has been undergoing a hi-tech safety overhaul since last July’s Paris crash, in which all 109 passengers and crew on board an Air France Concorde died.
Four people on the ground were also killed, when the stricken jet ploughed into a hotel.
A British Airways spokesman said: ‘‘We aim to have passenger services flying again by late summer so obviously test flights would need to happen before that.
‘‘They will be in the very near future, but I would rather not say whether it will be this week, next week, this month or whenever.
‘‘There have been a number of preferred dates talked about but we have not had any confirmation of a specific date.’’
British Airways’ seven Concordes are now being fitted with super-strong Kevlar fuel tank liners and new, tougher tyres.
Last year’s disaster happened when one of the Concorde’s tyres burst, flinging up debris and rupturing a fuel tank and starting a catastrophic fire which sent the doomed airliner plunging into a hotel near Charles de Gaulle airport.
