Concorde flew regular transatlantic flights in less than half the time of other airliners
Taken on Mar. 2, 1969, the following clip features Concorde 001 performing a successful maiden flight, in Toulouse, France.
Aérospatiale/BAC Concorde was a British-French supersonic passenger jet airliner. It had a maximum speed of Mach 2.04 (1,354 mph or 2,180 km/h at cruise altitude, over twice the speed of sound), with seating for 92 to 128 passengers. The aircraft entered service in 1976 and continued flying for the next 27 years.
Concorde, which was jointly developed and manufactured by Aérospatiale and the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC) under an Anglo-French treaty, was built in twenty samples including six prototypes and development aircraft.
Air France (AF) and British Airways (BA) were the only airlines to purchase and fly Concorde.
The supersonic airliner flew regular transatlantic flights from London’s Heathrow Airport and Paris’s Charles de Gaulle Airport to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, Washington Dulles International Airport and Grantley Adams International Airport in Barbados; it flew these routes in less than half the time of other airliners.
The type was eventually retired in 2003 after the crash of Air France Flight 4590 on Jul. 25, 2000, in which all passengers and crew were killed. The general downturn in the commercial aviation industry after the September 11 attacks in 2001, and the ceasing of maintenance support for Concorde by Airbus (the successor company of both Aérospatiale and BAC), also contributed.
