Last week we were invited* to Manchester Runway Visitor Park on one of their family fun days. Every Sunday through the holidays they have held family fun days where fair ground rides are free to go on.
The Runway Visitor Park is home to five aircrafts, including the Concorde G-BOAC, Nimrod, DC-10, Trident and Avro RJX.
You can book onto tours of the Nimrod and Concorde as well as flight academies for children between 3-12 years old. These allow children to board the crafts and learn about different roles of the airport. Unfortunately these were all booked up but I’m hoping to book one of these for the October holidays when they are back on. We did, however manage to book onto the Classic Corncorde Tour.
The Classic Corncorde Tour gave us chance to go into the Concorde Hangar. We got to board Concorde and sit in the luxurious leather seats and learn about some of the aircraft’s famous passengers. The tour was really interesting and we each went down to sit in the pilots seat and got to discover the unique features that made Concorde so special.
Did you know that people would travel to New York at breakfast, have their business meetings, do some shopping and fly back for bed time? That’s pretty impressive and even in 2018 we can’t do that. This did come at a cost of around £6000 though!
During the flight Concorde could stretch between 15 and 25 centimetres due to heating of the air frame. She is painted in a specially developed white paint to accommodate these changes and to counter the heat generated by supersonic flight.
The Concorde’s top cruising height was 60,000 ft, more than 11 miles above the surface of Earth and when on board you could see the curve of Earth.
Concorde could accelerate from 0-225 mph in 30 seconds and travel faster than the speed the Earth rotates.
In the park there is also a museum you can look around which is free entry, a play area and you can watch the flights coming and going from Manchester Airport on the raised viewing mounds. There is a gift shop full of memorabilia, a sandwich bar and restaurant. It is such a fab day out and must do for any plane fan x
The Runway Visitor Park would be perfect for my daddy as he loves aircrafts! Nice that the rides are included too x
I saw Gatwich wad doing something similar, what a wonderful day spent at the runway.
What great day out, its fab they are doing something to help entertain the children throughout the summer!
Sounds amazing – my daughter would love the plane tour! Shes fascinated!
Ah we really need to go to this, I think the kids would love it!
That looks like great fun, my son would love it.
I’ve not heard of this place before, but added to our to-do list for next time we are in Manchester – the children would love it
As a bit of an airplane geek, I love days out like this!!
Wow Dil would love this. I’ve always been fascinated by Concorde! Getting up this close must’ve been brilliant.
Wow Dil would love this. I’ve always been fascinated by Concorde, getting up this close must’ve been amazing!
Oh wow how cool to see a concord up close! Such an awesome day out, my kids would love it here and never heard of it before, thanks for sharing, it’s going on the bucket list
Laura x