Bahrain entered the commercial supersonic age on January 21,1976, and yesterday marked the 50th anniversary of the first British Airways (BA) Concorde flight to Bahrain.
The historic first flight from London to Bahrain marked a key aviation heritage shared by Bahrain and the UK.
Simultaneously, a flight took off from Paris to Rio de Janeiro via Senegal in West Africa.
The flight to Bahrain took less than four hours as the aircraft flew faster than the rotation of the earth.
At their cruising speeds, the innovative Concordes flew well over the sound barrier at 1,350 miles an hour, cutting air travel time by more than half.
Among those passengers that landed in Bahrain was Anthony Hopkins, a businessman at the time who has meticulously archived several items from his journey, including tickets, baggage tags, promotional material, and even the safety instructions card.
He donated his collection of mementos to the National Museum of Flight at East Fortune Airfield in East Lothian, where the British Airways G-BOAA (Golf-Bravo Oscar Alpha Alpha) aircraft has been housed since April 2004.
Mr Hopkins also kept the in-flight menu, which was signed by almost all passengers onboard including the British broadcaster Peter Sissons.
It showed that passengers enjoyed a three-course lunch preceded by caviar and lobster canapés and beverages.
Ian Brown, assistant curator of aviation at the museum, said it was ‘amazing’ to receive the donation, which he described as ‘absolutely unique’.
“There are only 100 people that got to be on that first flight as the passengers, so having this material from one of the people on that flight, which was the Concorde that we have here at the museum, was just amazing, and there is so much detail in there,” Mr Brown told PA Scotland.
“There’s a menu from the flight, signed by most of the people on the flight, newspaper cuttings and things, so just a lot of context with his boarding pass and these luggage tags and all that kind of stuff – it really brings it to life.”
Mr Hopkins, who lived in Sale, Cheshire, at the time of the flight, had brought the mementos with him while visiting the museum on holiday and showed them to Mr Brown who said the items certainly deserved a place in the museum.
“It’s not just the airplane, which, beautiful as Concorde is, an airplane is a lump of metal – it’s people’s stories, it’s about Mr Hopkins and his experience of the flight, and that personalises it.
“It’s not just about the object.
“It’s about the people who were connecting to that object, so being able to tell personal stories about individual people is always what we would prefer to do.”
National Museums Scotland yesterday shared the news of the donation on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the inaugural BA flight in January 1976.
Al Hilal Group’s managing director, Ronnie Middleton, who worked for BA from 1969 until 1978 recalls that he missed the first scheduled flight as he was involved in the Concorde Endurance Flying Programme which was a critical testing phase to meet airworthiness standards.
“I was involved in the Endurance Flying Programme, which was from June to August 1975 when Concorde was tested in hot air condition in Bahrain and also in Dakar Senegal,” said Mr Middleton.
“When I returned to Bahrain on a permanent posting in May 1976, I was involved in marketing the new service to the business community around the Gulf region, and it was an extremely popular option especially for passenger travelling to the US.
“With Concorde we were able to advertise that you could have breakfast in Bahrain, arrive in time for breakfast in London and then, linking with the service across the Atlantic you could arrive in time for breakfast in New York all in the same day!
“Everything about Concorde was so special, and even today you have to admire the designers of an aircraft which really was ahead of its time,” said Mr Middleton who also attended a function alongside BA’s iconic stewardess and face of the airline in the 70s and 80s Roz Hanby to introduce the jet to leading business people in Manama. Many celebrities used the service.
Famously, singer Shirley Bassey travelled to Bahrain on Concorde for a fleeting visit to the kingdom in the 1970s.
She was collected by a Rolls-Royce at the airport and taken to Sakhir Palace to perform and then on to Adhari pool to sing before returning to the supersonic jet for a flight back to London in time to open her show at the London Palladium.
Now aged 89, Dame Shirley performed the theme songs to three James Bond films – Goldfinger (1964), Diamonds Are Forever (1971) and Moonraker (1979).
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