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Cabinet ministers warned that Concorde would be very expensive as long
ago as 1960, according to public records released this month.

Duncan Sandys, the aviation minister, wanted Cabinet approval to spend
500,000 Pounds (pds) on developing a supersonic airliner able to cruise
at more than twice the speed of sound. He argued that the aircraft would
use ‘the latest aerodynamic techniques, in which we believe that Britain
is in the lead’.

But the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Derick Heathcoat Amory, warned
‘to continue the design study would make it increasingly difficult to abandon
it and the government might find themselves committed to immense expenditure.’

Sandys forecast the development cost at around 70 million pds although
other Cabinet members feared a bill in excess of 100 million pds. A decade
later the cost had soared to 1 billion pds.