'Desperate' BA selling Concorde pens

BRITISH Airways' attempts to claw back the £84m cost of ditching its fleet of Concordes has forced it to plumb the depths of selling memorabilia of the supersonic icon on QVC, the cable shopping channel for retail junkies and insomniacs.

More than £3.5bn in debt, and hit by soaring fuel costs and cut-throat competition, BA has been busy raising cash from the sale of spare parts and mementos of the aircraft that flew on the edge of space and at twice the speed of sound.

But a year on from its last flights, attempts to continue to cash in on its cachet have seen BA turn to QVC to hawk the last dregs of what has been a multi-million pound Concorde souvenir market.

While auctions earlier this year saw an Italian businessman pay £115,000 for a nose cone, pairs of Concorde Rolls-Royce engines go for £60,000, blue leather seats knocked out at £2,000 and even a toilet cubicle bought for £5,500, the QVC sale was rather more bargain basement with branded pens and cufflinks at 50% discounts.

A spokesman for BA refused to comment on how much it has raised from such sales, but added: 'The money will go to offset the costs of last autumn's farewell tour of Concorde.'

Arch-rival Sir Richard Branson is not especially impressed, he says, as BA bought Concorde for just £1 from the British taxpayer.

A spokesman for Branson's Virgin Atlantic said: 'We would like to see the funds going to preserve one Concorde to fly for the nation, something we would still be willing to back.

'There is no reason why a Concorde should not fly at celebratory events, especially something like the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics.'