CONCORDE, THE ANGLO-FRENCH PLANE IS FIRST TESTED

Today, The Grandma has been remembering her last flight in Corcorde, the British-French turbojet-powered supersonic passenger airliner that was first tested in Toulouse, France, on a day like today in 1969.

The Aérospatiale/BAC Concorde is a British-French turbojet-powered supersonic passenger airliner that was operated from 1976 until 2003. 

It had a maximum speed over twice the speed of sound, at Mach 2.04 (2,180 km/h at cruise altitude), with seating for 92 to 128 passengers.

First flown in 1969, Concorde entered service in 1976 and operated for 27 years. It is one of only two supersonic transports to have been operated commercially; the other is the Soviet-built Tupolev Tu-144, which operated in the late 1970s.

Concorde was jointly developed and manufactured by Sud Aviation, later Aérospatiale, and the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC) under an Anglo-French treaty. Twenty aircraft were built, including six prototypes and development aircraft.

Air France and British Airways were the only airlines to purchase and fly Concorde. The aircraft was used mainly by wealthy passengers who could afford to pay a high price in exchange for the aircraft's speed and luxury service. For example, in 1997, the round-trip ticket price from New York to London was $7,995, equivalent to $12,700 in 2019, more than 30 times the cost of the cheapest option to fly this route.

The original programme cost estimate was £70 million. The programme experienced huge overruns and delays, with the program eventually costing £1.3 billion. It was this extreme cost that became the main factor in the production run being much smaller than anticipated.

More information: The History Press

Later, another factor, which affected the viability of all supersonic transport programmes, was that supersonic flight could be used only on ocean-crossing routes, to prevent sonic boom disturbance overpopulated areas. With only seven airframes each being operated by the British and French, the per-unit cost was impossible to recoup, so the French and British governments absorbed the development costs.

British Airways and Air France were able to operate Concorde at a profit after purchasing their aircraft from their respective governments at a steep discount in comparison to the program's development and procurement costs.

Among other destinations, Concorde 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 in Virginia and Grantley Adams International Airport in Barbados; it flew these routes in less than half the time of other airliners.

Concorde won the 2006 Great British Design Quest, organized by the BBC and the Design Museum of London, beating other well-known designs such as the BMC Mini, the miniskirt, the Jaguar E-Type, the London Tube map and the Supermarine Spitfire.

The type was retired in 2003, three years after the crash of Air France Flight 4590, 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 end of maintenance support for Concorde by Airbus also contributed to the retirement.

More information: The Museum of Flight

The origins of the Concorde project date to the early 1950s, when Arnold Hall, director of the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE), asked Morien Morgan to form a committee to study the supersonic transport (SST) concept. The group met for the first time in February 1954 and delivered their first report in April 1955.

Reflecting the treaty between the British and French governments that led to Concorde's construction, the name Concorde is from the French word concorde, which has an English equivalent, concord. Both words mean agreement, harmony or union.

The name was officially changed to Concord by Harold Macmillan in response to a perceived slight by Charles de Gaulle. At the French roll-out in Toulouse in late 1967, the British Government Minister of Technology, Tony Benn, announced that he would change the spelling back to Concorde.

This created a nationalist uproar that died down when Benn stated that the suffixed e represented Excellence, England, Europe and Entente (Cordiale). In his memoirs, he recounts a tale of a letter from an irate Scotsman claiming: [Y]ou talk about 'E' for England, but part of it is made in Scotland. Given Scotland's contribution of providing the nose cone for the aircraft, Benn replied, [I]t was also 'E' for 'Écosse' (the French name for Scotland)- and I might have added 'e' for extravagance and 'e' for escalation as well!

Concorde also acquired an unusual nomenclature for an aircraft. In common usage in the United Kingdom, the type is known as Concorde without an article, rather than the Concorde or a Concorde.

 More information: Air & Space Magazine

The Concorde is great.
It gives you three extra hours to find your luggage.

Bob Hope