A nose cone from the supersonic Concorde plane is coming to auction in Northamptonshire.
Extracted from Antiques Trade Gazette | Laura Chesters
Known as the ‘droop’ nose cone, will be offered by Humbert & Ellis in Towcester on June 20 with an estimate of £200,000-300,000.
This example was from a test specimen aircraft and was last sold in 1995 out of the collection of aeronautical collector Wensley Haydon-Baillie by Sotheby’s in London. It was bought by current owner aviation entrepreneur Farhad Azima who relocated it to Kansas City, Missouri.
The nose cone measures 24ft 5in x 4ft 11in (7.5m x 1.5m) and is being offered at auction with a pilot’s visor..
It is not the first time Humbert & Ellis has sold Concorde related objects. In February 2018 it sold what was billed as the only unused nose cone from the few that were originally made for the Concorde fleet by BAC Aerospatial. It was hammered down at £63,500 against a £45,000-60,000 estimate.
The supersonic airliner launched in 1976 and made its final flights in 2003.
Concorde was an Anglo-French initiative by BAC, a forerunner of BAE Systems, and Aerospatiale, now a part of Airbus. Its final commercial flight was a BA operated flight on October 24, 2003, from New York’s JFK International Airport to London Heathrow.
The Concorde nose cone can be viewed and bid for via thesaleroom.com. The buyer will need to pay for its relocation from its current home in Kansas.