Concorde Trip To Spokane Doubtful

Tue., March 11, 1997

By Michael Guilfoil mikegu@spokesman.com

The Concorde’s first commercial flight to Spokane may never get off the ground.

Only 10 passengers have signed up for a ride aboard the 100-seat supersonic jet.

Last month, St. Louis-based Monclair Travel began promoting what company Vice President Diane Sommer called “the trip of a lifetime” - a May 11 conventional jet flight from Spokane to New York, followed by a six-day ocean crossing aboard the Queen Elizabeth 2 luxury liner, four nights in London and a return flight to Spokane on a British Airways Concorde.

So far, only 10 area residents have booked passage, which costs $5,895.

Unless another 90 sign up by the end of March, the Concorde leg of the trip will be limited to a London-to-New-York flight with a conventional jet bringing passengers back to Spokane.

“It’s still a great trip,” Sommer said, “whether the Concorde goes all the way to Spokane or only as far as New York.”

Of the more than 30 Concorde excursion packages Monclair Travel has organized since 1989, only five have generated enough ticket sales to justify flying the Concorde to cities other than New York, the jet’s normal destination.

Those were Tucson, Ariz.; St. Louis; Little Rock, Ark.; Dayton, Ohio; and Springfield, Ill., Sommer said.

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