By Harry Keaney
For Atlantic-hopping high-flying business execs, the Concorde’s still the way to go — despite the recent Air France crash in Paris that killed 114 people.
Even those who’ve endured a scare while aboard the Concorde and lived to tell the tale are not being put off. Take, for example, Irish American Jim O’Shaughnessy, chairman and CEO of the Internet services company Netfolio, which has offices in Manhattan and Greenwich, Conn.
Less than a week after the Air France crash, O’Shaughnessy and his wife were on a British Airways Concorde from London to New York.
"About two hours into the flight, the captain said there was some odd odor and we were diverting to Gander in Newfoundland," O"Shaughnessy told the Echo. "That caused a bit of a stir but no one seemed to he outwardly panicky about it."
After spending about six hours in Gander, the Concorde’s 57 passengers, including singer Tony Bennett and jazz artist George Benson, were taken to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York on a regular Boeing 737.
Sign up to The Irish Echo Newsletter
The incident did nothing to dampen O’Shaughnessy’s inclination to fly supersonic again. "I would fly on a Concorde again," he said.
Indeed, no sooner than the next day, O’Shaughnessy was in the air, albeit it in "a little prop" from La Guardia Airport to meet members of his family in Nantucket, Mass. And, despite recent events surrounding the Concorde, O’Shaughnessy said smaller planes, like the one he was taking to Nantucket, make him more nervous.
O’Shaughnessy’s family emigrated from Galway in the mid-1800s; he himself lived for a period in Ireland, in Waterville, Co. Kerry.