Remembering the British Airways Concorde

During a recent event at the U.K.'s Imperial War Museum Duxford, several former British Airways Concorde 101 crew members shared their memories of working aboard that historic aircraft. The museum is the new home of the now retired Concorde 101. The aircraft will be housed permanently in a new £25 million AirSpace Exhibition hangar.

Maggie Sinclair, who had worked aboard the Concorde as cabin crew, was among those who shared their recollections. Here is an excerpt from an interview with Ms. Sinclair, published in the Cambridge Evening News:

"It was a very different, a very nice service and very personal," she said. "You had 100 passengers, but you had to give as much attention to them as you could. If they wanted something you got it straight away.

"Concorde was not actually first class, but a mixture. It was a prestigious plane to be on - I loved the ambience of it. I enjoyed the speed, although you didn't sense it. I was brought up in a garage so I was always keen on speed!

"People were always interesting and there were lots of wonderful passengers. Andy Warhol did not speak to us - he had his own man with him - but he wanted to see the flight deck. We had Eartha Kitt and Peter O'Toole. Quite a few who had been to LA together - Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry. Joan Collins was a regular. David Frost would always sit in one row at the back of the plane and stretch himself out.

"We had Christopher Reeve once. It was always lovely to be able to look after these people.

"I was in the crew that took the Queen once, on a State Visit to Ottawa for the 125th anniversary of the opening of parliament."

Ms. Sinclair noted that she and her colleagues on the Concorde had the same uniforms as the rest of British Airways cabin crew, but "we had to wear our hats whereas other crews didn't and we had special silver name badges."

Cabin crew had new uniforms issued to them for the Royal flight.