Man holds the record for most-traveled Concorde passenger with a storied history

Fred Finn is the ‘most-traveled’ Concorde passenger in history.

Finn was a Concorde passenger for nearly 30 years, and he was also on the last ever flight in 2003.

His Concorde frequent flyer status helped him set a record that’s never going to be beaten.

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Finn began flying during what some people still refer to as ‘the golden era of aviation’, boarding his first flight in 1958.

Around 20 years later, his Concorde journey – both figuratively and metaphorically – began.

A 27-year journey

Concorde first flew in 1969, and the first scheduled flight left the tarmac in January 1976.

Finn wasn’t on that flight, but he was on the first flight from Washington to London, a few months later on 26 May 1976.

This was the first of many Concorde flights for Finn who, at the peak of his career, was flying Concorde at least four times per week, with two return flights from London to New York.

He would always take seat 9a because, as he explains, that used to be the seat they started serving food and drinks from.

Naturally, Finn was also one of the lucky people aboard the final Concorde flight, on 26 November 2003.

By that point, Finn had racked up 15 million miles (2.4 million kilometers) aboard Concorde.

He is so familiar with Concorde he even has his favorite, Concorde 216 G-BOAF (pictured below).

Concorde wasn’t the only plane Fred Finn used

Finn flew Concorde as often as he could but he also liked traveling to destinations that the world’s first supersonic airliner couldn’t reach.

Finn said he’s flown across the Atlantic over 2,000 times, usually on Concorde, and he said he visited Africa on 600 occasions (!), with his favorite spots being Nigeria and Kenya.

All that flying came at a cost

It’s unclear whether Finn could afford to fly Concorde simply because he was making good money or because he was getting comped for it, but either way, Finn says he spent at least $2 million on Concorde flights.

He did it over the course of 27 years, but that’s still impressive.

His first Concorde ticket cost him over $1,000, which was the going rate at the time.

Spending $1,000 in 1976 would be equivalent to over $5,000 in today’s money.

By the early 2000s, when Concorde was about to be retired, the price of a return ticket had shot up to $10,000-$20,000, which is around $20,000-$30,000 today.

It’s a lot of cash, and unfortunately, the hefty cost is one of the main reasons why we can no longer see – or hear – Concorde overhead.