BA97 was not my first Concorde flight, I had previously flown on flight BA002 from New York JFK to London Heathrow on the morning of Saturday, October 12th 2002. In the following pages, I will travel-log this, my first Concorde journey, operated by G-BOAE. See also The Travel Scholar for a detailed Concorde travel-log.
				At the time, I was training for a new job in New York, an 18-week course with no breaks, so the only option for a visit back to the UK was over a weekend. I could have made the red-eye BA flight on the Friday, but had prior plans and so I took the opportunity to fly the Concorde on the following morning.
				The Saturday morning service to London had a scheduled departure of 0900, so A 'once in a lifetime' called for travelling smartly, so I dressed in a suit and I left my apartment in Manhattan around 0530 to get to JFK early and take advantage of the facilities available. Traffic moved quickly out of Manhattan and I arrived at Terminal 7 at around 0630, as dawn was approaching.
				Quickly moving inside, I was checked in quickly by the friendly staff (when was the last time you had four staff members checking in one passenger?!) and given seat 7D, a window, at my request. On handing over my checked luggage, the baggage handler attached a special Concorde baggage tag (shown here) to it, grey with "Concorde" and the silver speedmarque motif.
				I headed through the glass doors toward the First/Concorde security area, past a few people who'd obviously decided I wasn't famous enough to ask for an autograph (more on this later)! I proceeded through security and on presenting my boarding pass was admitted to the Concorde Lounge. First call was the toilet, which proved hard to find - the door fit perfectly flush with the wall!
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