Air France Concorde ~99

[Nigel C]

Digging through some old photos, I found a series of an Air France Concorde take off shots I took in Sydney some time around 1999. There is a youtube video of the same take-off taken from the western Ansett apron.

Registration is F-BVFC, but would anyone know the actual date it arrived and departed?

Here's a few poor quality scans. The actual photos look much, much better.

[Grahame Hutchison]

Hi Nigel, I found this on an Airliners.net forum thread relating to Concorde in Hong Kong ...

Air France has charter services round the world a couple of times every year (not once every couple of years). Also, the 12/31/99 visit of an Air France Concorde (F-BVFC) was arriving from Sydney via Jakarta and was leaving for Delhi nonstop.

[Grahame Hutchison]

Great old images Nigel (love the rotate images). Unfortunately they always look much better as original prints than what can be achieved with a scan.

I always loved the Concorde visits, and can remember Air France visiting Sydney a few times (I have a print of an Air France Concorde outside the Qantas hangers). Here are a few shots of G-BOAE from 1985 (landed on Runway 16 on the 14/02/1985 and departed on the 15/02/1985).

[Nigel C]

Thanks Grahame. I added a couple more rotation shots to the original post.

I'm wondering if there might have been another tour by that aircraft before the New Years one you mentioned? I know I went up there on a day off, and I remember it was one of the only times I've ever taken my wife airside (yep, 13 years of working there and she's had maybe 2 or 3 visits?), but being New Years eve doesn't seem right...?

[Grahame Hutchison]

This was F-BVFF (the rego is a little unclear) in Sydney on 24/01/1988

[Matthew Chisholm]

It wasnt NYE. I did the tarmac tour the day the Air France Concord was there. Back in the days of a minibus and having the door open.

[Nigel C]

24th September 1999 seems to match up with quite a few photos on Airliners.net. This must have been it!

[Andi O]

My records show F-BVFC visiting Sydney in Sep 98 arriving as AFR4605 from Christchurch on 21/9. I don't have the departure details, but most of these flights went to Denpasar a couple of days later.
I show no record of "FC" visiting in 99, just 2 visits from "FB" Feb and Sep (This aircraft was also in Sydney in Oct 98)

[Nigel C]

I didn't start at the airport until 99, so it couldn't have been the 98 tour.

Like I said, Airliners has a few shots from 21st September 1999 of BVFC arriving as AF4604 from Christchurch, and departing on the 24th September from a number of different photographers...they can't all be wrong surely!

[Nigel C]

Originally Posted by chris d

Nigel: I'll do some asking and find out for sure. Being 1999 and Concorde Fox-Charlie narrows it down and should make it easy to find out exact dates and the whole entire schedule.

The attachment is the 1998 one from Intrav. It doesn't match the AF4604 flight number - it is 4608 through to 4612, but the schedule matches in with Andi O's recollection.

We'll find out for sure - and this is sure one of the more interesting topics in recent times. It's great just seeing all these wonderful photos!

You can blame Bernie P for the creation of this thread. It was his posting of a Concorde take-off video on Stalkerbook that prompted me to go digging through an old box full of photos, hoping I could find the take-off series of which some are shown here.

I was chatting to one of the ATC'ers late last night about Air France and the Concorde visits to Sydney. They had some real eye-opening stories to tell about 'non-standard' departures!