Northern Hills Homeowner's Association

Concorde took flight in hearts

Feb 13, 2001

By Sig Christenson
Express-News Staff Writer

It was a cool, high overcast morning when the sleek, four-engine jet approached San Antonio International Airport from the northeast, a crowd of more than 5,000 below.

They'd come to see the Concorde, the first jet to fly passengers 12 miles high at twice the speed of sound, and they weren't disappointed as it touched down, engines roaring.

"It was a beautiful sight to see that thing come in," said retiree Paul Bissing, 67, of New Berlin.

"It was," retired air traffic controller Tom Litzinger, 71, of San Antonio, agreed. "It's very unique."

Bissing and Litzinger were among those welcoming Concorde on her maiden flight to the Alamo City in 1978. They were among two dozen people to call or e-mail the San Antonio Express-News after a story Monday said a Concorde landing here this summer would be the first at the San Antonio airport.

Airport spokeswoman Laura Guerrero told the paper the Concorde had never landed there and likely could not because its 8,502-foot runway is too short.

Peter Zimmermann, an executive with the St. Louis, Mo., travel agency putting together the Concorde flight, said the plane had landed and taken off from runways even shorter than the one here.

In a twist that further clouded the charter flight, British Airways spokesman Leo Seaton expressed doubts that the Concorde would be able to fly out of San Antonio on June 1 as the travel agency plans.

He said the airline's focus is on getting Concorde back on its regular commercial run, starting with a single daily return flight between London and New York this spring.

"We hope we can resume Concorde's charter flying program at some stage in the future, but we cannot at this stage indicate when this will be," Seaton said.

"But we are very well aware that flying Concorde is a dream of many, many people, and we hope that we will be able to ensure that we are able to make these dreams come true in due course."

Zimmermann said his firm, Montclair Travel, was "confident that it will operate on June 1" but did not elaborate.

The charter package, which includes the Concorde flight, five nights in London at a five-star hotel, tours and a cruise to New York aboard the Queen Elizabeth II, range from $6,999 to $15,000 per person, double-occupancy.

Montclair had received 62 inquiries as of 3 p.m. Monday, said Zimmermann, the firm's executive vice president. The phone, meanwhile, rang off the wall both at the Express-News and airport public affairs office.

"From a mistake I really learned a lot," Guerrero said. "Every caller was interested in telling me where they were when it happened."

The consensus, though, was that the Concorde came to San Antonio in the late 1970s as part of a publicity campaign mounted by Braniff International, a now-defunct airline. Word of the event drew thousands to San Antonio International.

"When it took off I was inside the building and it vibrated the inside of my body," said Mary Schoenert, a San Antonian then working at the airport as a ticket agent. "No plane has ever done that before."

Crowd safety was on the mind of Bill Czervinske, then an air traffic control manager at the airport. Thousands of people were standing off the runways and milling in and around the terminal areas, and cars were lined up along Wetmore Road and other streets bordering the airport, he said.

"It was something we were concerned about," said Czervinske, 68, of San Antonio.

But the flight went off without a hitch, and the Concorde left town, not to return until a 1991 trip during which Queen Elizabeth II also visited the city. The Concorde landed at Kelly AFB on that trip.

Schoenert ranks the Concorde visit with stops made by the space shuttle at Kelly AFB as it was flown atop a Boeing 747 from Edwards AFB, Calif., to Florida.

"I'd put it up there with that," she said.

Bissing, who watched the Concorde landing from a rooftop, said, "It was memorable enough that I'll never forget it."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
sigc@express-news.net