What is the Concorde?

The Concorde emerged from the 1962 agreement between France and the United Kingdom to split development between Sud Aviation (later Aérospatiale) and the British Aircraft Corporation. Its ogival delta wing, four Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus 593 engines with afterburners, and the droop nose for visibility on landing made it one of the most recognisable machines of the 20th century. Prototype 001 took off from Toulouse on 2 March 1969, and commercial service began on 21 January 1976 with simultaneous flights Paris–Rio de Janeiro and London–Bahrain.

It cruised at Mach 2.04, about 2,180 km/h, at altitudes of 15,000 to 18,000 m (50,000 to 60,000 ft). The iconic London–New York route took just under three and a half hours, half the time of a subsonic airliner. Friction heated the nose to around 127°C, and the fuselage stretched several centimetres in flight. It carried about 100 passengers in a narrow cabin, with fares well above conventional first class.

Only 20 units were built, of which 14 entered airline service, seven per carrier. Fuel consumption, the ban on supersonic flight over land due to the sonic boom, and the cancellation of orders from other airlines left it with just two operators. The Gonesse crash on 25 July 2000, which killed 113 people, forced reinforcement of the fuel tanks and a change of tyres. With the drop in traffic after 2001 and rising costs, Air France retired it in May 2003 and British Airways on 24 October 2003.