Returning an aircraft like the Vulcan to service is not an easy task. Everything has to be checked – from the strength of the airframe to the engines to the seals and every last scrap of wiring.

“Our experience is that it takes twice as long and costs twice as much as you first thought,” Pleming says. “It ended up taking us 26 months and cost £7m.”

The Vulcan could not fly as fast as Concorde – its maximum speed was just under the speed of sound, around 645mph (1,030km/h), less than half the Concorde’s cruising speed. The aircraft also could be returned to the sky under different regulations intended for ex-military aircraft. Those that affect Concorde are much more stringent, because it was an aircraft intended to carry passengers. It would have to pass those airworthy certificates before it could fly again, Pleming says. That is likely to cost much, much more than £7m.

Bear in mind, too, that the Concorde was at the bleeding edge of aviation and engineering knowledge and considerably more complex than the subsonic Vulcan. And every single part of it, from the airframe to the air conditioning wiring, would need to be rigorously checked and, if needed, replaced.

Technical headaches

The Vulcan team were lucky in that they had access to several of the aircraft’s Bristol Olympus engines which had never been used – known as ‘zero-hour’ engines. Jet engines require regular maintenance for every hour they are operated, and have a limited life. Engines that have never been used greatly increase the amount of time a plane can be kept in the air. But there are no zero-hour Concorde engines left. And any other spare parts would be almost impossible to find. It has been 12 years since a Concorde last flew, but nearly 40 years since the production lines in Britain and France closed down. The technicians who helped create the aircraft’s parts are either long retired or dead.