Historic Flight of Wealthy Americans : Concorde Loses Chunk of Its Tail

A British Airways supersonic Concorde airliner carrying 100 wealthy Americans on a round-the-world trip lost a section of its tail while traveling at nearly twice the speed of sound 47,000 feet above the Tasman Sea but landed safely here today.

“It wasn’t till we got out of the plane and saw the fire trucks and all the press . . . that we knew something was wrong,” said conservative columnist William F. Buckley Jr., who helped organize the trip, which cost passengers $39,000 each.

Passengers heard a “large thump,” but members of the crew of the 15-year-old airliner told them they believed that the noise had been caused by air turbulence. It was only when the plane landed that the 9-foot-long tail section was discovered to be missing.

‘No Emergency’

“It was a normal landing, there was no emergency,” airline spokesman Peter Stanton said. “The pilot, Capt. David Leney, was told by the control tower that a piece of the tail was missing.”

There were no injuries among the 100 passengers, all Americans, on the 38,343-mile journey--the first attempted supersonic circumnavigation--that started April 1 in London.

In London, a British Airways spokeswoman said the airline is sending out spare parts to Australia to repair the plane, which will go on to Perth, Australia, on Friday as scheduled and then to Africa before returning to London. Another spokesman said the tail sections of other Concordes are being checked.

The Concorde had been trying to break the speed record on all stops, making about 12 in all. The planned three-week journey includes stops in exotic locations like Colombo, Sri Lanka and Mombasa, Kenya.

During the trip, Buckley planned to broadcast his television show “Firing Line” from Cape Town, South Africa, and Sydney.

“I’m glad that it was a plane that could manage without that much superfluous tail,” Buckley said.

“If we had nose-dived . . . into the Tasmanian Sea, there would have been a considerable reaction. But one simply assumes that nothing fatal has happened if indeed there is no confirmation nor any visible invalidation of the ship’s performance,” he said.

Buckley said: “There is a possibility they (British Airways) will find a defect . . . that will result in the grounding of other Concordes. But obviously they’re hoping that won’t be so, that this is simply an eccentric fluke.”