I was worried that the book would lose my interest or that the aviation terminology would be hard to follow, but Bannister done a fantastic job of explaining the terminology and keeping the reader invested. The way Mike tells this part of the story is especially engaging, as he meticulously leads you through what happened, like peeling back the layers of an onion. Concorde was acquired by Penguin Michael Joseph Publishing Director, Rowland White from Mark Lucas at the Soho Agency.

Eyewitnesses described flames coming from the back of the aircraft before it ran over the piece of metal on the runway.It is now thought the wheels hit a small ridge in the runway at 100 knots, dislodging a piece of the undercarriage which broke off and hit fuel tank number two. Once he was established, Mike gives a good feel of what it was like in the early days when Concorde was in its prime and gives a few amusing anecdotes of a bygone age when passengers could wander onto the flight deck. The Paris crash is a big part of the second half of the book and it was interesting to read again what happened and the various investigations. We're kitted out with cardio stations including treadmills and cross trainers all with touchscreens and internet access, bikes, resistance kit machines, large free weights areaand dedicated functional training zone. It’s written to be enjoyed by the lay-person, just as much as the pilot or engineer, and I think Bannister has balanced that well in this book.

Living under the 09L flight path of London Heathrow airport I was lucky enough to spend many days watching her at Heathrow and also looking skywards from my garden in Windsor. I was on Concorde for 22 years, so I felt I needed to capture the story of an incredible aeroplane," he says. Sure, it does whet the appetite in a way that appeals to those of us who identify as aerosexuals, but it’s subtle and very well done, considering this book isn’t written just for us. As someone who spent 22 years on the aircraft, rising from First Officer to Chief Pilot his perspective adds a new viewpoint to the existing material.Concorde was a technological triumph that Neil Armstrong said posed as great an engineering challenge as putting men on the moon. This being said the author has struck a great balance between telling his own story as well as the story of Concorde herself from a perspective, that not many had the honor of having, from the pilot seat of probably the worlds most famous airliner.

Bannister takes you into the cockpit and shares what it was like to fly such a machine at the edge of space. The VC10, Britain’s answer to the Boeing 707, with its four engines at the rear was another elegant aircraft.I have visited both planes in Duxford and Brooklands and still love seeing them but miss seeing it fly. But that perhaps is what makes it interesting - yet if you are looking into deep insights into the background of Concorde’s design and build, you aren’t going to get it. The sense of class, excitement and insight into a cultural club of passengers that used the aircraft was also vividly told. Mike was one of those lucky people who ended up in the right place and time to do exactly the job he had dreamed of doing when he was a kid - which was flying.