Flying High

Admire a supersonic Anglo-French aristocrat of the air as Concorde glides into Teesside Airport.

On a crisp December morning in 1982, the dauntingly beautiful time machine that was Concorde edged onto the tarmac at Teesside Airport. The gent in the grey suit that emerges from the stylised, supersonic airliner like a celebrity is Eddie Kyle, a former professional footballer, who chartered the iconic plane as an audacious promotion for the launch of his travel agency. He almost went bankrupt that day but triumphed in the end.

This amateur record of the occasion was filmed by members of the Cleveland Cine Club, one of whom takes a chartered pleasure trip on a small Corsair commuter plane, surveying the Tees river valley around the airport, including the gridlocked roads. The plane returns for a last glimpse of Concorde on the runway, a technological marvel from a now vanished era of civil supersonic flight. Eddie Kyle took out a bank loan and a second mortgage on his home to afford Concorde’s £51,000 appearance fee. According to the Evening Gazette, a local business executive who spent £4,000 on 20 seats for his client saved the venture from making a loss. Kyle became station manager at Teesside Airport for British Midland.