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The speed and elegant appearance of the Concorde inspired awe. Its ear-rattling sonic booms irritated people on the ground and led to restrictions on where the jet could fly.
The Concorde’s maiden flight was 50 years ago this month. Although the plane went out of service in 2003, its delta-wing design and drooping nose still make it instantly recognisable even to people who have never seen one in person.
The Concorde was the world’s first supersonic passenger plane. It was a technological marvel and a source of pride in Britain and France, whose aerospace companies joined forces to produce the plane.
Its first flight occurred on March 2, 1969, in Toulouse, France.
Inside the cockpit it was tense. Three of the four air-conditioning systems had broken and the temperature rose quickly.
“Under our helmets, we were soon sweating profusely,” Turcat recalled in his book Concorde (1977).
The test flight lasted 28 minutes.
British Airways and Air France launched passenger flights in 1976.


With four jet engines and afterburners, the plane could fly at twice the speed of sound and cruised at close to 60,000 feet, far above other airliners. It promised to revolutionise long-distance travel by cutting flying time from the US East Coast to Europe from eight hours to three and a half hours.
Depending on the layout, the plane could seat up to 128 passengers, far fewer than on many other planes flying the transatlantic routes.
End of the A380 superjumbo: Airbus to stop making world’s biggest passenger jet in 2021
The relative scarcity of seats and the plane’s high operating costs made tickets expensive – typically several thousand dollars – so it was mostly reserved for the wealthy and famous, occasionally royalty.
In the US, the plane flew mainly to New York and Washington and attracted quite a buzz.
In the mid-1980s, men dressed as Union and Confederate soldiers to re-enact a Civil War battle in Virginia paused in mid-skirmish to gaze up at a Concorde flying into nearby Dulles Airport.

A Concorde captain raved that the plane flew beautifully, and that the only indication of its speed came from looking down at other jets far below that seemed as if they were flying backward – the Concorde was moving about 1,280km/h (800mph) faster.
Jamie Baker, an airline analyst and aviation enthusiast, took the plane from New York to London in 2002.
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Perhaps because it was a morning flight, the mood was more dignified than festive, Baker says. The ride was so smooth that there was hardly any sensation of flight.
“No turbulence. No sense of motion, save for the clouds passing by below us,” Baker says.
“Concorde was a tool devised to outwit time.”

Former Boeing engineer Peter Lemme recalls his 1998 flight as a delight, but cramped.
“The seats were more like what we flew domestically in coach,” he says.
“The food was excessive,” including caviar, and there was a duty-free cart piled with very expensive items.
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However, the Concorde never caught on widely. The plane’s economics were challenging, and its sonic booms led it to be banned on many overland routes.
Only 20 were built; 14 of which were used for passenger service.
As time went on, flights were disrupted by mechanical breakdowns including engine failures and a broken rudder.
Reviewers complained about the small cabin, noise, and vibrations that started during take-off and continued once airborne.

The plane’s darkest day came on July 25, 2000, when an Air France Concorde crashed into a hotel and exploded soon after take-off in Paris, killing all 109 people on board and four on the ground.
Investigators determined that the plane ran over a metal strip that had fallen off another jet on to the runway, damaging a tire. A piece of the tire crashed into the underside of the wing, shock waves caused a fuel tank to rupture, and the fuel ignited.
The planes were grounded for expensive modifications. After 18 months, BA and Air France both resumed flights, but traffic never recovered.
When Concorde first landed in Hong Kong, in November 1976
It was determined that a more intensive and expensive maintenance schedule would be required to keep the fleet flying.
In 2003, BA and Air France both stopped Concorde service.
BA’s chief executive called it “the end of a fantastic era in world aviation,” but added that retiring the planes was a prudent business decision.
Supersonic transports could yet make a comeback. Several companies are working on models and hope to test them soon.

Some facts about the doomed ‘great white bird’
A dream is airborne
The first flight of Concorde’s prototype 001 was a successful half-hour test over Toulouse, southern France, on March 2, 1969.
It would take another seven years for the aircraft developed by French company Aerospatiale and the British Aircraft Corporation (precursor of BAE Systems) to begin commercial services.
Its inaugural scheduled passenger flights were on January 21, 1976: the Paris-Rio route operated by Air France and London-Bahrain by British Airways.
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Supersonic speed
The Concorde and the short-lived Russian Tupolev Tu-144, known as the “Concordski”, are the only passenger airliners to have flown faster than the speed of sound.
While sound travels at around 1,225km/h (761mph), the Concorde was able to reach a cruising speed of around 2,200km/h.
This meant flying time between New York and Paris of three and a half hours, about half that of a regular flight today and 10 times faster than the first non-stop crossing by US aviator Charles Lindbergh in 1927.
But shorter travel times came at a price: a return London-New York ticket in 2003 cost around £8,300 (US$11,960).

Thunderously noisy
The Concorde was famously loud: a take-off at Washington airport in 1977 measured 119.4 decibels.
By comparison, a clap of thunder hits 120 decibels while the pain threshold for the human ear is around 110.
When the jet broke through the sound barrier, it created a “sonic boom”, a huge crashing noise which led many countries to banish it from flying over their territory.
Why Margaret Thatcher refused to share her Concorde flight with a panda
Fuel guzzler
Another black mark was the Concorde’s high fuel consumption. Its four Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus 593 engines together guzzled on average 20 tonnes of kerosene per hour of flight and 450 litres (nearly 120 gallons) per minute at take-off.
The fuel consumption per passenger was 14-17 litres for every 100km travelled – four times more than for an aircraft today.
Just 14 jets
Its developers had hoped to sell more than 100 models but in the end just 14 were used commercially between 1976 and 2003, seven each by Air France and British Airways, no other carrier buying in.
Small by contemporary standards, a Concorde could carry between 100 and 144 people.
Associated Press, Agence France-Presse


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Aviation

Flights of the Concorde: a look back on the world’s first supersonic passenger jet

FILE - In this July 25, 2000, file photo, Air France Concorde flight 4590 takes off with fire trailing from its engine on the left wing from Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. A French appeals court is expected to decide on Thursday, Nov. 29, 2012, whether to uphold a manslaughter conviction against Continental Airlines for the crash over a decade ago of an Air France Concorde that killed 113 people. Continental Airlines, Inc. and one of its mechanics were convicted in 2010. (AP Photo/Toshihiko Sato, File) MANDATORY CREDIT; JAPAN OUT

A Concorde supersonic jet lands at Kai Tak Airport during its demonstration flight.

DUB01:PEPSI DUBAI:DUBAI,07APR96 - Dubai aviation officials watch the arrival of Pepsi's Concorde, leased from Air France and sporting the new electric-blue Pepsi colours, which stopped over in the Gulf Arab emirate April 7 while on a whirlwind marketing tour of the Middle East. The visit is part of a $500 million project called " Project Blue" to win back market shares from arch-rival Coca-Cola. While in Dubai, Pepsi took 100 VIP guests on a supersonic flight. The flight arrived from Beirut and will continue on to Jeddah and Cairo. clh/cac/Photo by Charles Crowell REUTERS

FILE--The interior of an Air France Concorde is seen in this May 1973 file picture. An Air France Concorde, similar to the one pictured here, en route to New York crashed outside Paris shortly after takeoff Tuesday, July 25, 2000, hitting a hotel and a restaurant. At least 113 people were killed when the charter flight of mostly German tourists went down in the first-ever crash of the supersonic jet. (AP Photo)

(From L) Captain Jean-Francois Michel, pilot Parick Delangle and technician Bernard Collette pose in the cockpit 30 May 2003 at Charles de Gaulle airport outside Paris, in the Air France Concorde before leaving the French capital to New Yok. The last commercial flight to New York by an Air France Concorde was carrying 58 passengers, including French Transport minister Dominique Bussereau, and eight crew for the three-hour 45 minute journey. Air France and British Airways (BA) are taking Concorde out of service after 27 years in the skies because of falling passenger numbers and soaring costs. AFP PHOTO POOL JOEL SAGET (Photo by JOEL SAGET / POOL / AFP)

Passengers get a view that many people will never see again, Mach 2 registered on the in cabin flight details of Concorde, 24 October 2003, as it flies over the Bay of Biscay before returned to London to land within minutes of the final schedule flight from New York. AFP PHOTO WPA ROTA Martyn HAYHOW) (Photo by MARTIN HAYHOW / AFP)

The Concorde was famously loud: a take-off in 1977 measured 119.4 decibels. The pain threshold for the human ear is around 110. File photo: AP

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The first flight of Concorde’s prototype 001 was a successful half-hour test over Toulouse, southern France, on March 2, 1969
It would take another seven years for the aircraft developed to begin commercial services


The Concorde airliner first took to the skies 50 years ago promising a revolution in air travel with its technical prowess and supersonic speed.


Plane crashes and aviation accidents