Concorde prepares for its final landing

The Charles Heidsieck is flowing, the tabletops are laid with white Royal Doulton china on crisp linen cloths and the poached salmon, asparagus and rocket salads are being served as, with one mighty surge of its 250,000 h.p. engines, Concorde's afterburners take us past the sound barrier.

It's climbing at a mile a minute, towards the edge of space. "You are now in the small club that has travelled faster than the speed of sound," says the suave chief Concorde pilot, Capt Mike Bannister, on yesterday's special London-Belfast flight.

This is a club of about 2.6 million people lucky enough to have experienced a part of aviation history and an extraordinary technological achievement that by Friday night will be a museum piece.

The sleek, supersonic aircraft is being retired because of escalating running costs and a drop in passenger numbers.

Concorde's interior is not luxurious. The windows are tiny and the inky-blue leather seats - two on either side of the aisle - are narrow (which is why Pavarotti needed two of them).

But Concorde was never about comfort.

Anyone who has experienced a Concorde take-off won't easily forget the rush of racing at 230 m.p.h. along a runway, and the abrupt virtual stall in mid-air as the aircraft slows and quietens to behave like "a good neighbour".

This week the "neighbours" would probably make allowances as the seven-strong fleet completes a lap of honour around the UK and across the Atlantic.

At Heathrow yesterday morning eight aircraft were lined up to take off ahead of Concorde. All ceded their slots so they could watch this icon of modern aviation history take off on one of its last flights.

Passengers are nibbling on the cheese course when the screen indicators show that it has reached Mach 2, 23 miles a minute, twice the speed of sound. That's 1,300 miles an hour. By now we're at 55,000 feet, some 25,000 feet higher than the highest commercial airliner. Up here the sky is a darker, deeper blue and appears dome-like as we get a sense of the curvature of the Earth.

The roar of the afterburners virtually drowns out Capt Bannister's announcement that there is no one higher in the sky, apart from space travellers.

This is the moment that the Asian gentleman in 21A chooses to propose to his astonished girlfriend, surrounded by cabin crew laden with champagne.

For once, Concorde is carrying not jaded celebrities and filthy-rich business people but ordinary folk who had won British Airways competitions, as well as delighted guests of the airline. Seán Martin (37), a London-based printer from Celbridge, on board with his brother, Ed, entered 150 times.

As political events evolved in Northern Ireland, Capt Bannister remarked that it could hardly have been a more auspicious day for Concorde to fly into Belfast.

Thousands gathered on the roads around the airport to watch the approach. As it came to a stop on the runway and passengers applauded the crew, Lisa Kent, a London-based cabin crew member from Glasson, Athlone, began to cry.

Outside, every member of airport staff, police and security created something akin to a guard of honour. For Mike Bannister, after 26 years on Concorde, the Airbus workhorse awaits.