ARD 1/200 BRITISH AIRWAYS AEROSPATIALE/ BAE CONCORDE G-BOAE/G-N94AE (ARDBA35)

Aviation history was made at Mach .95 on Friday January 12, 1979 as two Concordes, belonging to Air France and British Airways, flew in from the east and lined up to land on parallel runways at Dallas DFW. The simultaneous touchdown marked the beginning of a regularly scheduled supersonic service between Dallas DFW and Europe by Braniff in cooperation with Air France and British Airways. The new interchange was the first of its kind involving a United States carrier and foreign airlines.

Braniff’ Airways had originally placed options for three Concorde aircraft with Aerospatiale in September 1966, but then cancelled these options in February 1973. But six years after they cancelled their options, the airline now had an ambitious expansion program, and wanted to operate Concorde. On January 12 1979, they introduced their first Concorde service between Dallas FWA in Texas, and Washington D.C. Dulles airport, and Europe on interchange of flights with British Airways and Air France. The flights between Dallas and Washington were operated by Braniff Flight and cabin crews from which British or French crews would take over for the remaining segment.

To operate this service, there had to be a temporary change in ownership of the aircraft. This was because the American version of the CAA, the FAA would not allow the non-US aircraft a US certificate of airworthiness, so therefore the aircraft ownership was only transferred to Braniff Airways for the Washington-Dallas segment of the route. As well as changing flight crews the US approved documentation and procedures had to be present on the flight deck, which meant that the UK/French documentation had to be stored in the forward toilet. There also had to be a change in the aircraft registration, while being flow on the Dallas – Washington – Dallas routes the “G” or “F” was covered up with white tape. On landing at Washington the ground staff would pull work ladders up to the tail and peel of the F- or G- registration numbers and changed them to an “N” with two letters and the numbers “94″ after that. This was repeated every time the Concordes landed in the US from Europe.

All the aircraft retained there BA Negus livery and Concorde was never painted in a Braniff livery. If the service had been successful and therefore continued, it would have been more than likely that one side of the aircraft would have been given a Braniff livery, in a similar way to what was done to this Concorde (G-BOAD) when used on Singapore Airlines services.