Two Concordes made emergency landings

Heathrow was put on full alert as the chartered flight carrying 100 passengers touched down.

Checks revealed it had been a false alarm.

Only hours earlier a different Concorde, on a flight from Barbados, suffered a failure of one of its four engines on its approach to Heathrow.

The aircraft landed safely, seven minutes before its scheduled arrival time on Saturday evening.

BA said an inquiry would be held into the causes of the engine failure and stressed there were no links between the incidents.

A spokesman said passengers had not been at risk in the latest incident as the jet can easily fly on one engine.

Safety checks

And BA revealed on Monday that engines had to be replaced on one of its Concordes after dust got onto compressor blades while the supersonic aircraft was being repainted.

The four Rolls-Royce Olympus engines were covered up during painting, but the dust got in during the buffing down of the primer coat of paint.

A spokesman said: "We were concerned that some of the dust may have lodged on the blades and might get into the air conditioning.

"So the engines were taken out, the blades were cleaned up and new engines were put in before the aircraft went back into service."

The airline said that the emergency landings were purely coincidental and no extra checks of Concordes were planned.