Concorde made supersonic air travel a reality between 1976 and 2003 for a few lucky passengers. While many dreamt (the plane doesn't fly anymore) of flying on the legendary British-French carrier, one individual managed to travel on it multiple times, and that too while setting a world record. According to records, Fred Finn has flown the most flights onboard the famous supersonic airliner.
A total of 718 times, Fred Finn had flown on the Concorde according to Concorde Heritage reports. He was also aided by these journeys in becoming the world's most frequent flyer (more than 15 million air miles). He travelled on both the first and last Concorde flights between the UK and the US, always sitting in seat 9A on every Concorde flight. According to him, this is due to the fact that 9A is where food and drink service started.
On one such day, he even boarded three different Concords! As an international license manager, Finn used to make two transatlantic return trips per week on the Concorde. In his job, he frequently travelled in the US, where he dealt with technology transfers to developing countries. Costs associated with supersonic travel quickly added up.
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Concorde Heritage reports that a roundtrip ticket on the delta-winged plane would cost about $5,000. It is estimated that this figure corresponds to the end of Concorde's service life, in 2003, which is around £8,300 today ($11,150). He is thought to have spent approximately £2 million on his Mach 2 Concord experiments over the years.
During his business travels, Mr Finn also visited Africa 600 times. G-BOAF was his favourite Concorde airframe, since it was the last Concorde ever built and displayed in the Aerospace Bristol museum at Filton Airport after logging 18,257 flight hours.
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