The fastest Concorde - G-AXDNPhotographed at Duxford in April 2007. Pre-production Concorde 101 G-AXDN first flew on 17 December 1971 from Filton and was retired to Duxford, where it landed on 20 August 1977, having made 269 flights (632 hours), of which 168 flights were supersonic.
During intake trials at Tangier following modifications to the intake control systems, the aircraft reached the highest speed ever reached by a Concorde of Mach 2.23 (1,480 mph) at a then record height of 63,700ft. This record was surpassed when another Concorde flew to 68,000ft.
In November 1974 G-AXDN flew from Fairford to Bangor, Maine, USA, in a record time of 2 hrs 56 mins, this was the fastest ever East-west crossing of the North Atlantic by a commercial airliner. 101 was en-route to Moses Lake in Washington State, for de-icing system trials. The aircraft had been fitted with a miniature closed circuit TV system which included camera that was fitted to the outside of the fuselage and a monitoring station in the rear cabin. The flight from Bangor to Moses took 4hrs 43mins, which was another record, this time for the fastest East-West crossing of the USA.
Picture added on 02 January 2008
Added by Peter John Langsdale on 11 November 2008.