The lots include flight and crew manuals, pilots’ handbooks and checklists for Concorde 01 – the aircraft used by the British - and more unusually a flight manual for aircraft 02, which was flown by the French.
According to SAS, the documents “provide an insight into the inner workings of Concorde” and the top lot is a Concorde Test Pilots Personal Training Note Book (1967-1972), a vinyl album containing 92 pages of printed schematic and diagramatic pages all with detailed hand-written training annotations, which is estimated at £1000-1500.
Other highlights include a Concorde Flight Manual, dated 1971-73, and a Concorde Prototype Checklist for Concorde 01, which are both expected to fetch £100-150 each.
Neil Shuttleworth, director at SAS, said: “It is extremely rare to see material such as this, relating to the genesis of the aircraft, on the open market and we are looking forward to seeing the interest generated.”
Several of the lots include meticulous notes made by assistant chief test pilot Peter P Baker. Captain Baker was part of Concorde’s crew on her first flight from Filton to Fairford.
A detail of one of the Concorde memorabilia lots at Special Auction Services (SAS).
It is not the first time Concorde-related items have come to auction. Last year JP Humbert offered a Concorde nose cone in February and Stroud Auctions sold a Concorde test pilot’s suit at £650 in April. While Bonhams and Christie’s sold Concorde souvenirs at auction in 2003, the year it made its final flight.
Concorde was an Anglo-French initiative by BAC, a forerunner of BAE Systems, and Aerospatiale, now a part of Airbus. The supersonic airliner launched in 1976 and made its final flights on both Air France and British Airways in 2003. Its final commercial flight was a BA operated flight on October 24, 2003, from New York's JFK International Airport to London Heathrow.
Auctions at SAS can be viewed online at thesaleroom.com.
Additional reporting Marissa Payne
