Aérospatiale/BAC Concorde (CONC)

Concorde was the product of a 1962 treaty between Britain and France to build a supersonic airliner together, pooling the Bristol 223 and Sud Aviation Super-Caravelle studies into one programme shared by the British Aircraft Corporation and Sud Aviation, later Aérospatiale. The ambition was a 100-seat aircraft cruising at twice the speed of sound across the Atlantic, and at the time of launch most of the world's major airlines took options on it, assuming supersonic travel would become the norm.

The French prototype, 001, flew from Toulouse on 2 March 1969, and the British 002 followed from Filton a month later; 001 exceeded Mach 2 in November 1970. The programme then met the 1970s. The 1973 oil crisis quadrupled fuel prices, environmental objections to the sonic boom barred supersonic flight over land in the United States and elsewhere, and every option except those of British Airways and Air France evaporated. Twenty aircraft were built, including six development airframes; fourteen production Concordes went to the two national carriers, and the governments wrote off the development cost.

Commercial service began on 21 January 1976, with simultaneous departures from London to Bahrain and Paris to Rio de Janeiro via Dakar. The New York route, delayed by a legal fight over noise at JFK, opened in November 1977 and became the aircraft's reason for existing: London or Paris to New York in around three and a half hours, with the aircraft leaving at 10:30 and landing, by local time, an hour and a half before it took off. British Airways turned the service into a profitable premium product in the 1980s; Air France ran it more thinly.

The end came quickly. On 25 July 2000 Air France Flight 4590 crashed after take-off from Paris when a tyre, burst by debris on the runway, ruptured a fuel tank; all 109 on board and four on the ground died, and the fleet was grounded for modifications. Services resumed in November 2001, into the post-9/11 collapse in premium travel and with Airbus announcing it could no longer support the type economically. Air France flew its last Concorde service on 31 May 2003 and British Airways on 24 October 2003. Every surviving aircraft is preserved in a museum.

Everything about Concorde followed from sustained flight at Mach 2. The slender ogival delta wing, with its curved leading edge, generated lift through vortices at the high angles of attack needed for landing while keeping drag low at supersonic speed; it had no flaps or slats, only elevons, and the aircraft landed at a nose-high 11 degrees. That attitude is why the nose drooped: it lowered 5 degrees for take-off and 12.5 for landing so the pilots could see the runway, and a retractable visor streamlined the windscreen in cruise.

Four Olympus 593 turbojets, developed by Rolls-Royce and Snecma from the Vulcan bomber's engine, sat in paired nacelles under the wing with variable-geometry intakes that slowed the airflow from Mach 2 to subsonic speeds before it reached the compressors; afterburners were used for take-off and for the transonic acceleration. The airframe was aluminium alloy, limited to Mach 2.04 by skin temperatures that reached 127°C at the nose, and the fuselage stretched by around 20 cm in cruise. Fuel was pumped between tanks in flight to move the centre of gravity as the aerodynamic centre shifted with speed, a system that doubled as trim.

Only two airlines ever flew Concorde in revenue service: British Airways, with seven production aircraft, and Air France, also with seven, both from 1976 to 2003. Braniff operated a brief interchange service between Washington and Dallas in 1979–80 using BA and Air France aircraft at subsonic speed, and Singapore Airlines shared a BA aircraft on a London–Bahrain–Singapore route for a short period. The core network was London and Paris to New York, with seasonal services to Barbados and charters around the world. All eighteen surviving airframes are now museum exhibits, from Heathrow and Manchester to Le Bourget, Toulouse, New York's Intrepid Museum and Seattle's Museum of Flight.

Flying Concorde was a premium experience built around speed rather than space. The cabin was narrow, with 100 seats in a 2-2 layout at about 38 inches of pitch, seats roughly the size of today's domestic first class, and small windows the size of a hand. What passengers remember is the take-off, with afterburners lit and an acceleration unlike any other airliner, the push of the transonic reheat over the ocean, and the cabin display climbing past Mach 2 at 55,000 to 60,000 feet, where the sky is dark blue and the curvature of the Earth is visible. The fuselage grew warm to the touch in cruise. Service was fine dining and champagne compressed into three hours. Tickets cost around £6,000 to £8,000 return in the final years, roughly twice first class. The best seats were at the front, away from the engines; everyone wanted a window regardless of the view.

You will not see one fly, but you may well see one on the ground: Concordes are preserved at Heathrow, Manchester, Filton (Aerospace Bristol), Duxford, East Fortune, Brooklands, Le Bourget, Toulouse, Sinsheim, the Intrepid Museum in New York, Washington's Udvar-Hazy Center, Seattle's Museum of Flight and Grantley Adams Airport in Barbados. It is unmistakable: a long, needle-thin fuselage on a delta wing with a drooping nose, four engines in two underwing boxes, and a tall fin with no horizontal tailplane. The British aircraft carried the G-BOA* registrations and the French F-BV** and F-BTS*; the development aircraft are at Duxford, Orly, Yeovilton and Toulouse.