Winston Aldworth: A novelty trip that will make a big bang

Club Concorde has launched a project to get the wind back beneath the supersonic bird's delta wings. Photo / iStock

The loudest - and fastest - passenger jet to grace the skies could be making a return.

Concorde was shelved 12 years ago: fuel costs were crippling and the Business Class and First Class offerings on regular aircraft had improved. Now, thanks to a dedicated bunch of plane nerds calling themselves "Club Concorde" - they have former Concorde captains and regular passengers in their ranks - it might fly again.

Club Concorde has launched a "Return to Flight" project - complete with a fundraising mission to bring in $284m - to get the wind back beneath the supersonic bird's delta wings.

They plan to buy two of the old planes now sitting unused in Paris and to get one of them in the air by 2019. The other will be turned into a tourist attraction on London's Southbank.

Sound ludicrous? Of course it does. But everything about Concorde was ludicrous from start to finish.

In terms of the amount of fuel used to carry a passenger from A to B, Concorde was about 25 per cent as efficient as most aircraft today. The efficiency-focused carbon-fibre aircraft rolling out of hangars today are definitely the way of the future for mass aviation.

Ironically much of the technology that went into Boeing's Dreamliner programme - lightweight structures and modern engines - started life in the aircraft manufacturer's efforts to build a supersonic passenger carrier to match Concorde.

There's no room in the modern market for a fleet of Concordes. But one supersonic passenger jet doing novelty runs? Count me in.