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The last Concorde finds a new home in Bristol. How to find it, and the 17 others...

The last Concorde to fly was moved to a new hangar/museum on February 7th 2017. Photo Airbus/Aerospace Bristol

Since the simultaneous take off of the first two passenger-carrying Concorde flights in 1976 - one from Air France and the other British Airways - the Anglo/French Aérospatiale/BAC supersonic airliner caught the public attention like few aircraft before or since. It was sleek, glamorous and fast - with a cruising speed of just over twice the speed of sound (that's 1,300 miles per hour), it immediately earned cache for those who pilot, crewed and travelled in it.

It carried just 100 passengers at a time, in a narrow fuselage and with small windows, but the crews went the extra miles to make the flights special experiences. But with engines developed for military bombers in the 1960's it was very noisy too.

I've lived in London since the early 80s, and nobody could ignore the roar of Concorde as it roared on take off or rumbled low on landing right over the centre of the city. And it was its noise footprint that was partly responsible for its lack of commercial success, both in its day to day noise levels, but also thanks to the unavoidable sonic boom that would thunder over vast distances as it flew overhead.

Fine for London to New York, but not so good from London to Singapore say, where the aircraft were required to fly sub-sonically across Europe, before opening the throttle over sparsely populated areas of Arabia. The local Bedouin said it was responsible for making their camels miscarry.

The Concorde is moved into its new purpose built hangar at Aerospace Bristol. Photo Airbus/Aerospace Bristol

Planned for era of cheap aviation fuel, the oil crisis of the 1970s made the Concorde's extremely expensive to operate, which saw the number of potential airline customers fall from 16 to two. BA and Air France persevered with their niche flagship plane, operating it across the Atlantic to New York, Toronto, Miami, Bridgetown, Mexico City, and Rio,plus down to Dakar and east to Bahrain and Singapore.

The Paris crash of 2000, despite being caused by debris on the runway left by a previously departing aircraft, shattered confidence in the Concorde and requiring modifications that grounded the aircraft for a year. It first flew again inauspiciously landing full of employees on September 11th 2001, just before the World Trade Center attacks. The passenger slump that followed, plus Airbus refusing to manufacture spare parts, was the end for Concorde.

Hard to imagine anyone doing this for another jetliner, but there were thousands of people across London out to view the last passenger flights. In fact three flights were scheduled to arrive one after the other on the afternoon of Friday the 24th of October, 2003. I stood on the roof of News International's Pennington Street printing works and offices, along with a knot of other employees - and everyone on the travel desk - and watched the three planes pass by.

This February has seen the last ever Concorde to fly moved to a purpose built hangar at Aerospace Bristol, at its Filton site just north of the city.

The new hangar clears the aircraft wing tips by just a metre at either side, and is part of a £19m project to exhibit the aircraft, which is due to open to the public in Summer 2017.

The Filton site has a long association with the Concorde, as this is where the aircraft were designed and built. Airbus have been looking after the aircraft since it made its (and all of the Concorde's) last flight into Filton in 2003.

Aerospace Bristol plans to take visitors on a journey through more than 100 years of aviation history, starting with the Bristol Boxkite biplane that was made here. There will be sections on aviation's pivotal role in the two world wars, through the technological advances of the space race, and up to the Aerospace industry of the present day.

See Aerospace Bristol

What happened to the rest of the Concordes?

There were only ever 14 Concordes in passenger service - seven each with Air France and British Airways. Plus there were six Concordes made during the development and testing phase. Thanks to the popularity and uniqueness of the Concorde, all but two are on display - or are about to be. The exceptions are the aircraft registered at F-BTSC that crashed in Paris, and F-BVFD, which was broken up in 1984.

In the UK there are Concordes at the...

Yeovilton Fleet Air Arm Museum in Somerset is dedicated to the history of British naval aviation. Over 100 aircraft are on display spread across four large halls, each with upper viewing galleries, where visitors can look down onto an excellent collection of aircraft - including the Sea Harrier, the Supermarine Seafire (the naval version of the Spitfire), and one of the Concorde test aircraft. See Fleet Air Arm Museum

Britain's largest aviation museum is Imperial War Museum at Duxford, 13 miles to the south of Cambridge. This is where the Imperial War Museum's oversized items are displayed - over 200 aircraft, vehicles and vessels. Its seven halls are on the site of Duxford Aerodrome, used by the RAF in the First World War, and many historic buildings there are still in use today - including hangars used to maintain aircraft during the Battle of Britain in the Second World War. Duxford is a base for several Air Shows too, the most well known being the Duxford Air Show, Flying Legends, and America Air Day.

Highlights of the collection include the world's only Royal Aircraft Factory R.E.8, built in 1916, The Panavia Tornado and Eurofighter Typhoon, the Messerschmitt Bf-109E, and even a 2,200 mph Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird strategic reconnaissance aircraft. Its Concorde is the only one in the country with a working droop-nose. Any delta wing aircraft - such as Concorde - adopts quite a steep angle from the horizontal at low speeds - and the aircraft angled upwards at the front during landings meant that its pilots couldn't see forward past the long pointed nose. Consequently a drooping nose was developed, where the nose cone could droop by 12.5 degrees.

See Imperial War Museum Duxford

Brooklands Museum is near to Weybridge in Surrey, about 25 miles southwest of London. Brooklands is famous for being the birthplace of British motor sport, however, it also played a key role in the development of early British aviation - with Bleriot, Hawker, Sopwith and Vickers all having bases here. The Daily Mail's 1911 Round Britain Air Race started and finished here, and had a celluloid reprise in the star-filled comedy 'Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines' film of 1965. The film involved a fictional air race from London to Paris and featured perhaps some of the most brazen racial stereotyping in the history of cinema - think impetuous Italians, Prussian-bearing Germans, and a cowboy cocky American.

The collection ranges from racing cars and motorbikes to aeroplanes. And as the the first Concorde planning meeting too place between the British and French here, it is fitting that the museum is the proud owner of Concorde G-BBDG. The imaginative Concorde experience staged by the museum involves a pre-flight briefing and a virtual flight.

See Brooklands Museum

The nose of Concorde G-BOAA at Edinburgh's National Museum of flight. Photo the National Museum of Flight

Scotland's National Museum of Flight is 22 miles to the east of Edinburgh, on a well preserved World War II airfield. The museum has the first aircraft collected by any museum in the UK - Percy Pilcher's glider, a remarkable hang glider that he called 'The Hawk' and which flew for 250m in 1897. He was well on the right track and was developing his engined Triplane when he made a public demonstration of the Hawk glider and died after falling 10m to the ground.

Other aircraft in the museum include the Supermarine Spitfire and Hawker Sea Hawk, and also passenger planes like the De Havilland Comet, BAC 1-11, Vickers Viscount, Boeing 707 and Hawker Sidley Trident. Two hangars housing 30 Second World War era aircraft have recently been redeveloped, but the star turn is Concorde registration G-BOAA, which has a walk through and around audio guide. See National Museum of Flight Concorde Experience

Passing the Concorde at Heathrow on landing. Photo Richard Green

Heathrow Airport, London - G-BOAB languishes in a disused car park at Heathrow Airport. The only way you can really see it is sometimes as a departing or arriving passenger if the wind is blowing from the west and you are using runway 27L. There have been wild rumours that it will be shipped to Dubai or even parked on a barge on the River Thames, but chances are it will just stay where it is - a strange reminder that Heathrow was once the home base of half the world's Concordes.

Manchester Airport's Runway Visitor Park. The park is right by the airport and has good views of the arriving and departing aircraft, and as well as having Concorde G-BOAC in a hangar that can be toured, there are also other aircraft on display (including an ex RAF Nimrod, DC-10, Trident, and AVRO RJX), a restaurant, children’s play area and aviation shop.

In France...

Air and Space Museum, Le Bourget - www.museeairespace.fr

Musee Delta, Orly - www.museedelta.free.fr

Airbus, Toulouse - www.airbus.com