Airliner World visits Aerospace Bristol to explore G-BOAF, 20 years after her final flight
It’s November 26, 2003. Around a month after three British Airways Concorde aircraft landed back at London’s Heathrow Airport on their final revenue flights, something was stirring. While the supersonic superstar might have finished carrying fare-paying passengers, there was one more assignment left for G-BOAF to perform: fly home.
Alpha Foxtrot (c/n 216), the last example to roll off the production line, took its maiden flight on April 20, 1979, wearing the registration G-BFKX. The airframe had been built by the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC) at Bristol/Filton in 1978, alongside sistership 214. Both were constructed with no customer orders after prospective buyers – including Singapore Airlines and British Caledonian – had fallen by the wayside.
Eventually, a deal was struck for the two aircraft to be sold to British Airways (BA). The airframe initially acquired the registration G-N94AF, which it never actually wore, and then G-BOAF, which it very much did, and was handed over by British Aerospace to BA on June 12, 1980.
The curious split British/American registration was something applied to most BA Concordes, and Aerospace Bristol…