For most people, a milestone birthday means a dinner party or perhaps a luxury vacation. For Omaha entrepreneur William “Willy” Theisen, turning 40 called for something far more extraordinary. The founder of Godfather’s Pizza celebrated the occasion by filling every seat aboard one of the world’s fastest passenger aircraft, transforming a British Airways Concorde into an invitation-only party headed for London.
A British Airways Concorde at Omaha’s Eppley Airfield on June 14, 1985, before carrying Godfather’s Pizza founder Willy Theisen, his wife Karen, and 98 friends on his extravagant 40th-birthday trip to London.
The celebration took place in June 1985, when Theisen and his wife, Karen, privately chartered a Concorde to fly themselves and around 100 guests from Omaha to England. Invitations simply read, “Karen and Willy Theisen invite you to their birthday party in London, England, via the Concorde,” reflecting that both had birthdays in May even though the lavish four-day celebration later became synonymous with Willy’s 40th birthday. While the entire event reportedly cost about $500,000, contemporary reports estimated the Concorde charter alone at more than $200,000, making it one of the most extravagant birthday journeys of the decade.
Willy and Karen Theisen pose with friends during their lavish four-day 1985 birthday celebration in England, after chartering an entire British Airways Concorde to fly their party from Omaha to London. Image – Omaha Critic
A supersonic celebration unlike any other
The traveling party consisted of Willy and Karen Theisen along with 98 friends, filling Concorde’s entire 100-seat cabin, according to a report by the LA Times. Unlike today’s oversized private jets, Concorde’s cabin was relatively narrow with a two-by-two seating layout. Its appeal wasn’t spacious luxury but exclusivity, speed, impeccable British Airways service, and the thrill of crossing the Atlantic at nearly twice the speed of sound with an aircraft reserved entirely for one celebration.
The aircraft itself has since been identified by specialist Concorde archives as G-BOAG, known within British Airways as “Alpha Golf.” Before guests boarded, the supersonic jet had positioned from London through New York to Omaha. On June 14, 1985, it departed Nebraska for London, once again stopping at New York’s JFK Airport before beginning the part of the journey everyone had been waiting for.
A surviving British Airways menu from Willy and Karen Theisen’s June 18, 1985 return flight to Omaha, showing the Concorde routing from London via New York and a personalized “Happy Birthday Karen and Willy” message. Image – Facebook / Lee Lombardi
The stop in New York wasn’t simply for convenience. Concorde was prohibited from flying faster than sound over the continental United States because of sonic boom restrictions, so the flight remained subsonic until it reached the Atlantic. After refueling at JFK, the sleek delta-wing aircraft accelerated toward Mach 2, shrinking the ocean crossing to just over three hours.
Although the menu served during Theisen’s charter has never surfaced, British Airways had turned Concorde dining into an event of its own. Guests were typically welcomed with vintage Champagne and canapés before enjoying multi-course meals featuring delicacies such as caviar, smoked Scottish salmon, lobster, duck, or grilled fillet steak, all served on fine china with carefully selected French wines. Despite Theisen’s fortune coming from pizza, there is no evidence a single Godfather’s Pizza was served at 60,000 feet.
When Concorde became Omaha’s biggest attraction
Long before the birthday party reached London, the aircraft had already become the biggest show in town. Concorde almost never ventured into America’s Midwest, and its June 1985 visit drew crowds to Omaha’s Eppley Airfield as curious residents gathered to see the world’s most famous supersonic airliner. One local spectator, Betty Bryngelson, admired the aircraft’s graceful profile, comparing it to a wild goose while remarking that if someone had the money, they should be free to spend it however they wished.
Omaha entrepreneur and Godfather’s Pizza founder pictured against the city skyline, decades after building the pizza empire that helped fund his famously extravagant 1985 Concorde birthday celebration.
Theisen’s celebration also came at a remarkable moment in his business career. After founding Godfather’s Pizza in 1973, he expanded the chain to roughly 900 restaurants before selling his stake through a major corporate transaction that reportedly earned him $128 million. Against that backdrop, the reported $500,000 spent on the four-day celebration represented only a tiny fraction of the fortune he had recently realized.
The Concorde birthday party also reflected a broader trend during the mid-1980s. British Airways was increasingly turning the supersonic jet into an exclusive charter aircraft for wealthy individuals, luxury tour operators, and corporations. Even so, few private charters matched the spectacle of flying an entire guest list from Omaha to London aboard the world’s fastest passenger airliner. More than four decades later, it remains one of the most memorable examples of how Concorde wasn’t just a means of travel but the centerpiece of an unforgettable celebration.
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The mighty Concorde flew 5 miles above the standard aircraft, where the thin cabin air dulled the passenger’s taste buds by 30%, forcing the airline to serve salty caviar, rich foie gras, & fiery ginger not for luxury, but science so the food hit the nerves & not the tongue
Concorde cruised at 55,000 to 60,000 feet, nearly five miles above where a regular jetliner spends its life, moving at Mach 2, or about 1,350 miles an hour. Up there, above the weather, passengers could actually see the earth curve beneath them and watch the sky fade toward the blackness of space. It was an incredible way to travel. But that altitude came with a catch nobody advertised on the ticket. The same thin, bone-dry, pressurized air that made the view so extraordinary was also working against the food and wine British Airways had spent so much effort perfecting.
David Stockton, who ran food and beverage development for the airline, knew this better than anyone on the team. Cabin pressure and dry air blunt a person’s sense of taste by somewhere around 20% to 30% on a normal long flight, and the problem only got worse on Concorde, where the cabin sat higher and drier than anywhere else in commercial aviation. So instead of just throwing luxury ingredients at the problem and hoping for the best, Stockton and his chefs built a menu meant to fight back against dulled palates, as per Vanity Fair. Underneath all that glamour, there was actually a fair amount of thinking about how flavor behaves at 60,000 feet.
Built to survive thin air
Caviar made sense almost immediately. It’s salty, it’s got that deep umami punch, and both of those come through even when a passenger’s taste buds aren’t firing on all cylinders. The texture alone gives you something to work with too, so it doesn’t rely purely on smell to land. And obviously it looked the part, which never hurts when you’re trying to convince someone their $12,000 fare was worth it.
Then there was the morel velouté, usually served with corn-fed chicken or guinea fowl, which might have been the smartest dish on the whole menu whether anyone planned it that way or not. Mushrooms are naturally loaded with umami, and that flavor seems to hang on better than most things do once you’re up in a pressurized cabin. Serving it as a velouté kept everything warm and moist too, which mattered a lot, since a dry reheated chicken breast at altitude is nobody’s idea of a good meal. Guinea fowl itself has more depth and a slightly gamier edge than standard chicken, giving it a better shot at cutting through, though honestly the sauce was probably doing more work than the meat.
Ginger compote was a clever move, and not for the reason most people would guess. Ginger doesn’t just register on the tongue, it also triggers the trigeminal nerve, the same system that picks up on heat and tingling and cooling sensations. So even after sweetness and aroma had been dulled by the cabin, a bite of ginger compote could still deliver a real physical kick. The compote format helped too, since it held onto moisture and kept the flavor concentrated instead of letting it fade out.
Foie gras rounded things out with sheer richness and fat, the kind of mouthfeel that doesn’t need a delicate nose to be appreciated. Its one weak spot was temperature. Serve foie gras too cold, and it goes flat fast, so getting that right, along with the seasoning, actually mattered more on Concorde than it would have on the ground.
Even the champagne had something to prove
Lobster was a slightly different story. It’s a delicate ingredient by nature, and that made it more exposed to dry cabin air than something heartier would be, so it usually showed up dressed with butter, herbs, or a sauce with some backbone to it. On British Airways’ first-ever Concorde flight, lobster reportedly turned up as a canapé alongside caviar and champagne before the actual three-course lunch even started, which suggests it was there for the moment as much as for the taste.
It’s said the same vintage was poured on Concorde’s very last scheduled flight, which feels fitting. Of everything on that menu, it was the one drink built, quite deliberately, to still taste like something worth remembering nearly five miles up.