Did the British Government give Concorde to British Airways for one pound UK sterling?
Claims in the Meida that BA paid £1.00 for the Concorde fleet or that it was given in trust are wrong. British Airways predecessors (BOAC) paid the manufacturers more than £155 million for the Concorde fleet and over the following 27 years of operation British Airways has invested more than £1 billion on the aircraft. The Concorde book value was written down to nil in 1979, by the then labour governmanet, and subsequent capital investments in the Concorde programme to 1983 were also written off to nil. In March 1984 the government ended its involvement with Concorde when British Airways assumed full responsibility for Concorde support costs. The British Airways Board paid £16.5 million to acquire the government’s stock of spare parts and was released from the profit share scheme under which the government collected 80 percent of Concorde operating surpluses. Within this agreement BA aquired the 2 Concordes that had been placed at its disposal in 1980 for abook value of £1 withing the £
