Letter: Concorde continues to lead the way

Sir: Rarely have I read - and with regret - a more negative or distorted account of an outstanding British advance in technology than in the anti-Concorde article by Christian Wolmar ('Concorde refit is last hurrah of unfulfilled aviation dream', 28 June). Fortunately, it was partly balanced by the reporting of Peter Liney's views on the same day.

Mr Wolmar wrote of Concorde - 'the revolution it was supposed to inspire has long been abandoned'. Not so. Work is well in progress by international teams, including British Aerospace, upon a successor to Concorde of higher capacity, longer range, rather higher speed, designed to be quieter and substantially more economic as befits more than a quarter of a century of further aeronautical progress.

Mr Wolmar's remarks about the future of supersonic flight generally, and of Concorde in particular, inaccurately seem to be aimed at denigrating the continuing technical and operational achievements on North Atlantic air routes which have no equal and will lead the way to further advances in commercial air transport.

Far from being 'trouble-ridden', Concorde has successfully amassed more flying hours than all other supersonic aircraft combined - and as the article observed: 'You arrive feeling that you have been on a short-haul flight in Europe and not on an inter-continental odyssey.'

Yours sincerely,

PETER MASEFIELD

Reigate,

Surrey

2 July