Since this 2000, the story of this Concorde has been a rather sad one. It was due to get the return to flight modifications following the Paris crash in 2000. BA had plans for a full cabin upgrade to their Concorde fleet known as ‘Project Rocket’. This interior upgrade was brought forward while the fleet was grounded and awaiting a return to flight status, it was only partly carried out and partly fitted to five of the aircraft in the fleet, and therefore essentially only consisted of the new passenger seating and carpets. The aircraft that received this first stage of the upgrade were G-BOAC, G-BOAD, G-BOAE, G-BOAF, G-BOAG. The full upgrade was planned for the fleet as each airframe became ready for their big major “D” check and would have consisted of new vacuum toilets and washrooms, new galleys, new lighting, new cabin wall fittings and new cabin info displays, so essentially a full cabin refit, that would last to the end of Concorde’s service life and the first since the 1990’s.

The new Poject Rocket washrooms that were test fitted to G-BOAB

But while the five airframes received their partial upgrades, G-BOAB had her old interior stripped out at BA Engineering, Heathrow and was then used to test fit the new toilets and washrooms, although the plan was to restore G-BOAB back to full flight status at some stage. One interesting fact is that the new toilets were fitted and tested aboard G-BOAB with dog food.
However, during the late summer/autumn of 2002, this test re-fit proved to be a tough task, new galleys were overweight, new toilet installations, which was always a little tricky with such a limited space, were even more problematic than was thought and in the end, the manpower assigned to Concorde G-BOAB for the test re-fits, was required for the day to day operations of the Concorde fleet. So it seemed that the manufacturers clearly had a lot more work to carry out before any insulations to the aircraft could be carried out, therefore in late 2002, further work on “Project Rocket” was suspended. This happened at a time while Alpha Bravo’s interior was putting it mildly in a “real mess”, due mainly to the interior removal which would allow the refit. So G-BOAB remained sealed up at BA Engineering awaiting her refit, a repair to the cracked wing spar and of course her CCA post Paris crash modifications requirements.

Then with the rapid chain of events that came about during 2003 following the decision by Airbus SAS to no longer support the Concorde operations for Air France and British Airways forcing the retirement of the whole fleet, G-BOAB was left stranded at Heathrow while her five flight status sisters were relocated to museums around the world and her other non-flight status sister G-BOAA was taken apart and transported by road and sea to Scotland.

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BA came up with various plans for G-BOAB, they all centred around the New Heathrow BA passenger hub, terminal “T5”, One plan was to suspend her from the ceiling, but this would have proved costly and the terminal construction would have been able to take the weight, the other plan was to station her next to the terminal in some way as a gateway guardian for British Airways, where she would act as a true ambassador for the company and the heritage of Concorde.

But none of these plans were released for various reasons, and in the end BA gifted Concorde G-BOAB, along with its log to BAA, the owner of Heathrow on 21st January 2004, which was the 28th anniversary of Concorde’s entry into service on condition that it remained at Heathrow as symbol that this was once the British home of supersonic travel, were people once flew from and crossed the Atlantic in just over three hours.  

So G-BOAB was placed on display at the airport near to Runway 23, as a mark of pride for this great aircraft, airport workers nick-named this area “Point Rocket”, the Rocket being the nick name given to Concorde by BA staff over the 27 years of passenger services. It was a beautiful sight, and many passengers enjoyed seeing Concorde while leaving and arriving at Heathrow. But then things took a turn for the worse once again for this Concorde, on 10th May 2006, she was removed from “Point Rocket”, and since then has not been properly displayed.