Elite Travelers Enjoy Life in the Supersonic Lane

From within the body of this grand, graceful bird--slender and delicate, with a nose like a fine silver needle--you gaze down at the curvature of the Earth.

The ride is a magic carpet, one great leap and then sleek smoothness. A little Beluga caviar, perhaps? Some Cristal with your Mach 2?

Next time you drag your suitcase down the crowded aisle of a standard jetliner and marvel as a badly dressed fellow traveler tries to shove a stuffed horse into the overhead compartment, consider the Concorde: airborne proof that the rich really are different.

Or maybe not. The late Andy Warhol was so enamored of his voyage on the supersonic jet that he stole the silverware. The flatware now resides in the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.

“It’s the height of luxury, but also the height of efficiency,” says Los Angeles fashion designer Carole Little, who says that, over 20 years, she’s taken the Concorde to and from Europe more times than she can count.

Her corporate accountant, however, probably does keep track. The 3 1/2-hour flight from London to New York prices out at more than $5,000--one way. Hop on a round-the-world trip on the Concorde, and you can shell out between $60,000 and $100,000--based on double occupancy, of course.

The Concorde, which crashed for the first time Tuesday, has long served as testimony to the axiom that time is money. And with just about 100 seats in each plane--so what if the legroom is pitiful and the ceiling could cause a concussion in anyone taller than 5 feet, 8 inches--the plane’s exclusivity gave new meaning to the term jet set.

“I’ve been on it once,” said Sandy Hook, an administrative assistant in Cambridge, Mass. “It’s very small inside, but it’s just so incredible when you take off on that plane, and when you finally get up to speed. They have this indicator in the front of the plane that tells you how fast you’re going. It turns to Mach 2, and it’s just so amazing.”

Hook was a veritable pariah on that flight, from London to New York, because she was using her laptop to take dictation from her boss.

“They joked about it. They said nobody works on this plane,” said Hook, who was distracted anyway because Richard Gere was sitting two seats in front of her.

Of course, it might have been Harrison Ford. Or Ralph Lauren. Henry Kissinger. Joan Collins. Phil Collins. Diana Ross. Paul McCartney. Mick Jagger. Sean Connery. Tiger Woods. David Frost. Boy George. Elton John. Most of the New York fashionista crowd. Just as many of the European couturiers. Or any of a thousand emperors of industry.

“It’s very unusual not to see a celebrity,” said John Hersh, vice president of World of Travel, a Columbus, Ohio, company that specializes in Concorde bookings.

“We have people who save up their entire lives to fly on the Concorde,” Hersh said. “They’re like kids in a candy store. When people fly it for the first time, their jaws just drop.”

International business executives love the Concorde because the supersonic speed makes same-day travel feasible. Fly from New York to London, hunker down for a dinner-hour business meeting, grab some shut-eye at a five-star hotel, get back on the Concorde, and you’re back before you’ve had time to jet-lag.

Santa Barbara investor William P. Foley II, for example, flew the Concorde from New York six years ago to make a same-day meeting in London when his title firm, Fidelity National Financial Inc., was considering an expansion into Britain.

“You don’t waste the whole day getting there, and you arrive fresh, with no jet lag,” Foley said.

From a business standpoint, the plane is speedy. But no one would call the Concorde a fuel-efficient operation. On the New York-Paris route, the supersonic transport, or SST, burns an average of 162,000 pounds of fuel, while a 747 consumes 180,000. And a jumbo jet seats about 300 more passengers.

Generously, the plane’s interior could be described as cozy. “It’s like flying in a bullet,” said Michael Meyer, an Orange County real estate investor.

But Keith Waldon of Virtuoso Travel in Austin, Texas, said the limited legroom is of scant concern to the Concorde clientele.

“It’s fine, especially if you’re used to flying on private planes,” Waldon said.

One of Waldon’s favorite set of Concorde consumers was the pair of dogs he recently booked in adjoining seats. The pooches were flying to meet their owner in Paris.

After its first test flight in 1969, the Concorde represented the new frontier of aviation. Yet the plane was never able to compete financially with its ungainly wide-body cousins. Only 12 of the supersonic craft remain in service, leading some analysts to predict that a brief, dazzling era of air travel will come to a close in 10 to 15 years.

Those who have ventured aboard commercial aviation’s highest-speed jets will cherish their memories the way ocean voyagers of another era once fondly recalled sailing aboard luxury liners such as the Ile de France, said Christa Brantsch of Abercrombie and Kent Travel in Oak Brook, Ill.

For fashion designer Little, the only downside to the Concorde is that it doesn’t fly out of Los Angeles, or into Asia. “That would make my life so much easier,” she said.

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Mehren reported from Boston and Sanders from Los Angeles.