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Our shift being on an early that day, we were taken to an auditorium in another building to get the offical news, just before it was released to the press, by the time this had finished, it was public.
We knew something was up, how could you not?
As we went to this presentation, personally I expected to be told it would be going in 2004, end of March or maybe end of October.
However, we were not fully aware of the scale of the problems AF were facing, we had some bits of information, not the full picture though.
And we knew that any threat to the AF operation, was also a threat to us.

In the weeks before, one manager, (not directly Concorde, but part of the longhaul fleet it was under), had during a visit to the hangar, (where he was never welcome) let it be known that the Inter check on OAE then completing, would be the last.
This was after he was challenged on staffing and other issues, and as always, turned nasty when he was challenged.
The person who he told this to was later hauled before him and told that he had not heard what he had and not tp repeat it anyway, but it was too late of course.
Certainly this raised suspicions even further, though the said manager was held in such little regard that you really did not know what to make of it, had he let the cat out of the bag or just flown off the handle when he could not answer questions and now was trying to cover himself?

However, by the start of 2003, concerns about too few staff and other issues directly affecting the operation, had been told to Eddington, usually through flight crew, more than once as well.
Shortly afterwards, there was talk of BA appointing a sort of 'Concorde Czar' to oversee the whole operation, a bit like Walpole did in 1982 when BA looked to make Concorde consistently profitable to ensure it's survival, this 'Czar', away from the hostile intentions of Engineering management, would ensure a stable remainder of Concordes life, at this point late 2004 was seen to be the earliest retirement date, with other options right through to 2006/7.
Some names of this 'Czar' were even banded about.
Then in late Febuary/early March, it all went quiet on this, now of course we know why, AF were pulling the plug and all bets were off.

Back to the 10th April, in a briefing to a later shift, Eddington pointed out that the retirement was being brought forward '18 months to 2 years early' which seems to confirm that a retirement between late 2004/late 2005, but again, events at AF had caused a revision of these plans.
This says to me that the terrible market generally, and BA parlous financial position, had ended any talk of a second round of big and expensive Major (D) checks that would come around at every 12000 hrs, and OAD/OAE were by then well past the 23000 hr mark, OAC was not far behind either.
Clearly, by late 2002, when these rumours started, BA was edging towards this timescale.

The briefing on 10th April was as much about the terrible market for premuim travel, BA were already planning to end 1st Class on some routes, it was also pointed out that in the run up to the new financial year, we had more cancellations than bookings for premium travel, never had BA faced such a situation before. Something had to give.
Finally, the implications for Concorde were made clear, the last BA001 would be on 23rd October 2003.
It was a bit of a shock, I was preparing to think about the implications for us of a March 2004 termination.

Then the head of Concorde Engineering spoke, about how we would try to get a concession of some sort on OAF's upcoming big Inter 4 check, (if we did it, it would come out not long before the end, no way were BA going to spend at least 6 million for a few weeks service), also on how we must still focus on the day to day.
He seemed happy, which went down badly, now I think it was relief, as all the speculation was at last ended, as well as the constant pressures, from AF, the authorities and parts of the airline now had an end in sight.
The more I heard about these pressures as time went on, the more I can now understand this.
Had not I myself said enough times in the months before, 'we cannot go on like this', I know I told Gordon this enough times in this period.

One interesting thing was said at this briefing, that the FAA had been 'harrassing' AF Concordes at JFK.
Our thoughts were that this was some sort of stupidity about US/French relations in the run up to the Iraq war, which fitted in with the boycott by a lot of US AF Concorde pax.
We later found out that in fact it was fallout from the Feb 19th incident, in which case the FAA had good reason to be worried.
But they were not like this at all with BA.

After the briefing, we went back to the hangar, it was quiet, people huddled in groups talking, I rang some coulleagues who were off shift, as well as some family and friends, usually starting with 'have you heard yet? We're dead', or 'we're f*****' depending who I spoke to!

Certainly a shock of course, but also some sense of relief, at least now we knew, the gossip could end.
Not at all like 25th July 2000 or 14th August 2000, I was in work both times for that, the 10th April 2003 was a different feeling, we knew a crunch was coming, if we were surprised to hear we had 6 months left, that was because we only really knew at close hand what was happening in our world, had we known more about AF's troubles then, we would not have been surprised at all.