The Mystery of the Yellow Table – Part 1

In 1907, reporter Joseph Rouletabille was to solve the "Mystery of the Yellow Room" in Gaston Leroux's detective novel.

With Rouletabille retired, we must now: find eyewitnesses, as much information and documents as possible to solve the "mystery of the yellow table" of Concorde 02 - F-WTSA.

On January 10, 1973, for its first flight and before the departure for Orly in May 1976, the rear cabin of the second pre-production Concorde aircraft 02 - F-WTSA, was equipped with 32 leather seats and a "yellow" Formica table (very fashionable at that time) to accommodate distinguished visitors (also called VIPs) during the various official and presentation flights.

On May 30, 1976, upon its arrival at Orly, this set of test equipment and the luxurious rear cabin were no longer in the aircraft.

According to all the information we had, this equipment was dismantled in Toulouse and installed on board the Concorde F-WTSB which continued the certification flights and is now at the Aeroscopia Museum.

In this long empty tube of the SA, only the "side-walls" of the original cabin remained.

To be able to receive visitors for ADP guided tours of Orly airport, Air France will renovate the entire interior using elements from a wooden training cabin that was used by the company's first cabin crew.

In the cabin on the right side, we placed 2 Concorde double seats facing each other and nine first-class double seats from another aircraft that we were unable to identify.

The galeys and the toilets are also integrated to resemble a cabin…

From April 1988, upon its arrival in Athis Mons, until 2012, the rear cabin was dedicated to exhibitions.

And in the front cabin, Mr. Nicolas Roland PAYEN welcomed visitors every day the museum was open in the facing seating area.

There was even a makeshift table with a yellow tablecloth.

On the occasion of the reopening in 2014, it was decided to completely reconfigure the layout of the cabins and to reproduce as closely as possible the original layout of the rear cabin.

As the original table and seats were unavailable, we had to buy two-seater seats from a Boeing 777 from Air France to recreate a cabin resembling the original layout, and in anticipation of a "future table," a space was left empty…

Looking at this photo taken by our friend François, we can see the layout of the rear cabin of the F-WTSB, currently on display at Aéroscopia. And as mentioned earlier, the seats and table from the SA were used to increase its capacity to 72 seats.

And it was at this moment that the "mystery of the yellow table" appeared.

It is by observing more closely the first photos of this article and those that follow that we discover a big difference between the two tables.

So, in order to potentially create a copy of a new "yellow table," we must solve this mystery:

Is it indeed the SA table that was reused and modified?

Is this a new table in the SB?

What type of table legs should we make?

Are the photos below those of the SA or the more recent ones of the SB?

If any of our readers have eyewitness accounts or participants in this story, we ask them to kindly send a testimony to our "home-based Rouletabille" (museedeltainfo@gmail.com) so that we can seriously consider the end of "the story of the yellow table".

To be continued…