Letter: Concorde memories

Sir: Among the 'revelations' in the Cabinet papers from 1962 analysed by your correspondent Nicholas Timmins (2 January) are the assessments of the Concorde project. Ministers knew that the plane would not be competitive with subsonic jets, and the then Minister of Defence predicted that development costs would turn out to have been underestimated.

It was not difficult for any observer to work out the economic realities of Concorde, and I made both those points when analysing the project in a Commons debate on 21 December, 1962.

Yours faithfully'

ERIC AVEBURY

House of Lords

London, SW1