Concorde: The thrilling account of history’s most extraordinary airliner

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It did get quite technical in part for the average reader but I am sure aviation enthusiasts would’ve appreciated that.

Mike was one of those lucky people who ended up in the right place and time to do exactly the job he had dreamed of doing when he was a kid - which was flying. He does so by outlining the necessary technical terms in a manner, that is always to the point and enhances the narrative not only when explaining the ins and outs of the aircraft, but also when analyzing the minute details of the accident at Gonesse. He takes through what it was like to fly Concorde from the point of departure, take-off, sub-sonic through to super-sonic and then landing. Another option would have been to sit there and burn fuel until they'd got their weight down to the performance-limited weight figure. I remember seeing its first flight on TV, and thinking when it was announced that its first commercial flight would be delayed until 1976 like that seemed a lifetime away - time passes so much more slowly when you’re young!Overall it was a fantastic book, about a one of a kind machine that hasn't been replicated since, written by someone that was actually there experiencing it and not just some historian presenting their evidence. He discovered considerably more fuel had been pumped into the aircraft than there should have been and that one fuel tank had ruptured from within. The technical information is presented in such an interesting way that it never felt boring or overloading. The book isn’t overly heavy on acronyms or jargon, Mike explains it all very simply to the non-flyer too.

The only downside was that I think that the Paris crash and its aftermath - though his revelations were surprising and different to what had been reported in the news - occupied too much of the book. Through the high times, and the low times of this sensational and unique flying machine, this book is a welcome opportunity for me to pay a deserving tribute to the truly remarkable aircraft that shaped my life – the life of that seven-year-old boy. We were flying faster than the Earth rotates, so we left London in pitch dark and arrived in New York in broad daylight," Mike continues. Above all it is a thrilling, revelatory, intimate and insightful account by the man who knew her best. Sir David Frost presented TV shows in the US and the UK, and became a regular, usually sitting in the back row, where he could spread out his newspapers and magazines.In detail he describes the latter’s change in fortunes from loss-making behemoth to profitable national icon. It’s written to be enjoyed by the lay-person, just as much as the pilot or engineer, and I think Bannister has balanced that well in this book. You'll be welcomed by our knowledgeable and experienced fitness team who are always on hand to offer support and guidance whenever you need it. It was Concorde's only crash in 27 years, but it forced the grounding of the BA fleet while new features - including stronger tyres and Kevlar fibre lining in the wingborne fuel tanks - were introduced. His new book, Concorde, charts his experiences and pays tribute to the world's first - and, so far, only - supersonic passenger jet.

For over a quarter of a century, Concorde was the world's only successful supersonic airliner, carrying passengers at speeds faster than a rifle bullet - and at heights that provided a glimpse of the edge of space. Investigators initially believed a tyre had exploded, sending metal fragments to puncture a wing-borne fuel tank which was then ignited by hot wiring.Not many people can offer us this perspective of Concorde, which Bannister brings to the book; this isn’t some regular “jockey” writing a book about an aircraft he/she has spent a couple of thousand hours in; nor is it written by a boffin who could overwhelm the reader with all manner of facts and figures digestible only for a select few. The 100 passengers on the charter flight to New York were killed, along with nine crew members and four more people on the ground. But the brilliant cross-Channel avionic collaboration first forged in 1962 was tested to the limit when one of the French aircraft crashed shortly after take-off in Paris in 2000, killing 113 people.