Monday, 23rd December 2024

World's Most Traveled Person Fred Finn arrives in Barbados

British Airways Concorde G-BOAE is preserved at the Barbados Concorde Experience. This aircraft is currently closed to the public.

Friday, 2nd February 2024

World's Most Traveled Person Fred Finn arrives in Barbados (PC - Facebook)
British-born traveller Fred Finn who has the record of being the World's Most Traveled Person is currently in  Barbados. Finn visited the Concorde experience and chatted with Hadley Bourne, CEO of Grantley Adams International Airport Inc. British Airways Concorde G-BOAE is preserved at the Barbados Concorde Experience. This aircraft is currently closed to the public. During the meeting on Wednesday, he thanked Adams for having him on board this amazing aircraft and said, "I sat in this seat over 700 times. It's like coming home for me." Fred Finn was impressed with the welcome he got in Barbados and said, "The welcome I've had this morning, it beats anything." [caption id="attachment_67516" align="aligncenter" width="400"] Fred Finn onboard British Airways Concorde G-BOAE (PC - Facebook)[/caption] Fred Finn's Concorde record will never be broken as the airline came to the end of its commercial life in 2003. He is staying at the Elegant Tamarind Hotel on the West Coast of Barbados.  During an exclusive interview in Barbados, he outlined, "I am really looking forward to Concorde becoming an attraction here. My first Concorde flight was quite memorable but not my best because I did not know what to expect." "There was a lot of differences between that and normal flying - the fact that you are going twice the speed of sound, and because Concorde was the world's first and only supersonic plane. I had been from flying on a DC3 to Concorde. It was an architectural wonder, a piece of art in the sky," he added.  Finn is on his second visit to Barbados, having come to the island for the first time in 2014 to judge a food competition. This time around, the mission has a lot more personal significance. Given his long association with Concorde and the cherished and indelible impact it has had on his life, he came to share his ideas with local aviation officials on the future of the Concorde Alpha Eco, now grounded in a hangar at Grantley Adams International Airport, years after it was the opened as the Concorde Experience, a tourist attraction showcasing the aircraft which attracted worldwide attention. The Concorde Alpha Eco is one of the seven planes in the British Airways fleet of supersonic jets, which were relocated to museums and other sites worldwide, marking the end of the Concorde era.  Finn holds the Guinness World Record for the most flights taken on the Concorde, where he always sat in Seat 9A. He carried an impressive 718 trips on Concorde with 22 370 000 kilometres travelled, which he amassed between 1976 and 2003.

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The 83-year old also shared his experience of first flight. He said that when Concorde began flying from Washington DC on May 25, 1976, he was on the first flight and still carries the original very special leather hand luggage tag.  [caption id="attachment_67517" align="aligncenter" width="583"] Finn carries the tag of Concorde with him[/caption] Finn outlined that as he commuted on Concorde and it was such a small fleet when he had done 150 flights, the press took notice, and then Guinness World Records met him in New York as he lived in the USA then. The Guinness eventually credited him with an entry into the Guinness World Records with 7 million miles in 1983.  As of now, he has travelled to 150 countries, with Georgia being the 150th, while he resides in both the United Kingdom and Ukraine, where her wife is from and has a home there.  In addition to this, Finn has flown across the Atlantic more than 2000 times, once flying between London and New York three times on the same day.