Aérospatiale/BAC Concorde

Updated: October 2026 – A fuselage like an arrow, a wing like a paper plane and a nose that tilts downward: you recognize the Concorde even without prior knowledge. You will not see it fly anymore, though – since 2003 the type has been history. This page is therefore about what spotters can still do with it today: the technology in detail, the differences between prototype, pre-series and production aircraft, all 20 serial numbers with registrations and the location of every surviving aircraft. The origins, the scheduled service and the end are told in the magazine article The history of the Concorde.

What is the Concorde?

The Concorde is a four-engine supersonic airliner for around 100 passengers. The United Kingdom and France agreed on the project in 1962 and shared work and costs. On the French side it was built by Sud Aviation, which merged into the newly founded Aérospatiale in 1970. On the British side it was the British Aircraft Corporation, which became part of British Aerospace in 1977. That is where the double designation “Aérospatiale/BAC” comes from. The Olympus engines were developed by Rolls-Royce and the French Snecma, now part of Safran. The successors of the British side are now part of BAE Systems, while the French legacy lives on at Airbus.

Final assembly took place at two sites: in Toulouse and in Filton near Bristol. Hence the two registration families: aircraft from Toulouse wore French F- registrations, aircraft from Filton British G- registrations. In scheduled service, the Concordes flew from 1976 to 2003 only with Air France and British Airways, seven aircraft each.

Technology: what Mach 2 demands

The Concorde was not a fast airliner but a supersonic aircraft with a cabin. Almost every detail you see on a museum example is explained by this mission.

The delta wing

The wing is a slender, curved delta with around 358 square meters of area – a so-called ogival shape. There is no horizontal stabilizer. Control about the roll and pitch axes is done with control surfaces on the trailing edge of the wing, the elevons. At high speed, this shape has little drag. At low speed it generates lift through vortices at the leading edge, but needs a large angle of attack for that. The Concorde therefore landed with a clearly raised nose, and on takeoff the angle of attack rose to around 18 degrees. So that the tail does not touch down in the process, a small tail bumper wheel sits under the end of the fuselage.

Nose and visor

So that the crew can see the runway at this angle of attack, the nose can be lowered: to 5 degrees for taxiing and takeoff, to 12.5 degrees for landing. In cruise it is up, and a visor slides in front of the windshield to protect it from heat and airflow. When the nose is lowered, the visor retracts into the nose first. In the museum, the Concorde almost always stands with its nose lowered – the typical picture spotters associate with it.

Engines and air intakes

Four Olympus 593 Mk 610 sit in pairs in two nacelles under the wing. Each delivers around 140 kN dry and around 169 kN with afterburner. The afterburner ran on takeoff and while accelerating through the range around Mach 1. The Concorde managed cruise at around Mach 2 without it. Crucial are the variable air intakes: movable ramps in the angular nacelle slow the air in front of the compressor from supersonic to subsonic, controlled by a digital computer. At the rear sit movable nozzle flaps, which also serve as thrust reversers.

Fuel as trim ballast

The Concorde held around 119,600 liters of kerosene. Part of it served as a movable mass: during the transition to supersonic flight, the wing’s center of pressure shifts aft. Instead of countering this with the control surfaces, the flight engineer pumped fuel into rear trim tanks and so shifted the center of gravity; during deceleration it went the other way around.

Fly-by-wire and cockpit

The flight controls were the first in an airliner to be transmitted electrically, still analog at the time. Three people sat in the cockpit: two pilots and a flight engineer. At around 2.62 meters inside, the cabin is narrow; four seats per row, small windows, because of the high cruising altitude and the pressure load.

Variants: prototype, pre-series, production

Because only 20 aircraft were built, almost every aircraft is one of a kind. Roughly, four groups can be distinguished.

Group	Serial numbers	Registrations	Special features
Prototypes (Concorde 001/002)	001, 002	F-WTSS, G-BSST	shorter fuselage, visor with only small viewing windows
Pre-series	101, 102	G-AXDN, F-WTSA	testing of improvements; 102 was the first with the production shape
Production development aircraft	201, 202	F-WTSB, G-BBDG	production standard, but never in scheduled service
Production for airlines	203 to 216	F-B… and G-BOA…	Variant 101 (Air France) or 102 (British Airways)

The prototypes had a visor that allowed forward vision only through small windows. For production it was reworked and fully glazed, partly after objections from the US aviation authority FAA. On the pre-series aircraft, changes went in that had to fix drag problems found on the prototypes: newly cambered wings, changed wingtips and a lengthened tail cone. The pre-series 102 (F-WTSA) was the first to show the shape of the later production aircraft.

The numbers 101 and 102 cause confusion, because they stand for two different things. As serial numbers, they denote the two pre-series aircraft. As variant designations, they stand for the production aircraft: Concorde 101 are the Air France aircraft, Concorde 102 those of British Airways. Technically there are only small equipment differences between the two; from the outside you recognize the variant by the registration, not by the shape.

An improved Concorde B with a larger wing, leading-edge slats, more fuel and more powerful engines was designed after service began but never built. If you want to compare the Soviet counter-design, you will find it with the Tupolev Tu-144 and in the article on the history of the Tu-144.

All 20 Concordes with registrations

The list is your tool for collecting: serial number, main registration, first flight and current status. The locations are as of October 2026; exhibition conditions change, so check with the museum or airport before every visit.

No.	Registration	First flight	Operator	Status (as of October 2026)
001	F-WTSS	March 2, 1969	Prototype	Musée de l’Air et de l’Espace, Le Bourget
002	G-BSST	April 9, 1969	Prototype	Fleet Air Arm Museum, Yeovilton
101	G-AXDN	December 17, 1971	Pre-series	IWM Duxford
102	F-WTSA	January 10, 1973	Pre-series	Musée Delta, Athis-Mons near Orly
201	F-WTSB	December 6, 1973	Test aircraft	Aeroscopia, Toulouse
202	G-BBDG	1974	Test aircraft	Brooklands Museum, Weybridge
203	F-BTSC	January 31, 1975	Air France	crashed at Gonesse in 2000
204	G-BOAC	February 27, 1975	British Airways	Manchester Airport
205	F-BVFA	October 27, 1975	Air France	Udvar-Hazy Center, Virginia
206	G-BOAA	November 5, 1975	British Airways	National Museum of Flight, East Fortune
207	F-BVFB	March 6, 1976	Air France	Technik Museum Sinsheim
208	G-BOAB	May 18, 1976	British Airways	Heathrow Airport, parked, not open to the public
209	F-BVFC	July 9, 1976	Air France	Aeroscopia, Toulouse
210	G-BOAD	August 25, 1976	British Airways	Intrepid Museum, New York
211	F-BVFD	February 10, 1977	Air France	scrapped in 1994
212	G-BOAE	March 17, 1977	British Airways	Grantley Adams Airport, Barbados
213	F-BTSD	June 26, 1978	Air France	Musée de l’Air et de l’Espace, Le Bourget
214	G-BOAG	April 21, 1978	British Airways	Museum of Flight, Seattle
215	F-BVFF	December 26, 1978	Air France	Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport
216	G-BOAF	April 20, 1979	British Airways	Aerospace Bristol, Filton

Secondary registrations and special features

Many Concordes wore more than one registration – exciting for everyone who is collecting registrations.

• Test registrations: French aircraft flew with F-W registrations before delivery, for example F-WTSC for the later F-BTSC. F-BTSD was temporarily registered as F-WJAM, F-BVFF as F-WJAN. How such factory registrations work is explained in the article on manufacturer test registrations.
• Re-registration: G-BOAG originally ran as G-BFKW before being folded into British Airways’ G-BOA series. For the system behind British registrations see British G- registrations.
• Braniff registrations: From January 1979 to May 1980, Braniff International Airways flew Concordes at subsonic speeds between Washington Dulles and Dallas/Fort Worth. For each rotation, US registrations were stuck over the French or British markings, such as N94FA for F-BVFA or G-N94AD/N94AD for G-BOAD.
• Gap in the series: Air France has no F-BVFE – the series jumps from F-BVFD to F-BVFF.

Museum examples for spotters

Because no Concorde flies anymore, every sighting is a museum visit or a look over an airport fence. Here are the destinations, sorted by region.

Germany: F-BVFB at the Technik Museum Sinsheim is the only original in the country, displayed together with a Tu-144. Sinsheim is part of a group with the Technik Museum Speyer.

France: At the Musée de l’Air et de l’Espace stand the prototype F-WTSS and the production aircraft F-BTSD – a direct comparison of the prototype and production visor. How to combine the visit with spotting is described at the spot Musée de l’Air at Le Bourget Airport. In Toulouse, Aeroscopia shows two examples, F-WTSB and F-BVFC; the spot Aeroscopia in Toulouse-Blagnac is right at the Airbus factory airport. F-BVFF stands at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport.

United Kingdom: Most Concordes stand here. G-BOAF at Aerospace Bristol is the last one built and the last one flown – more on the location at the spot Aerospace Bristol in Filton. G-BOAC at the Runway Visitor Park Manchester you combine with current scheduled traffic. In addition there are G-AXDN at the Imperial War Museum Duxford, G-BBDG at the Brooklands Museum, G-BOAA at the National Museum of Flight East Fortune and the prototype G-BSST at the Fleet Air Arm Museum Yeovilton.

USA: F-BVFA stands at the Udvar-Hazy Center right at Dulles Airport, G-BOAG at the Museum of Flight Seattle and G-BOAD on the pier of the Intrepid Museum in New York.

How to keep your sightings in good order is explained in Documenting sightings. You will find more classic destinations in Spotting rare aircraft.

Concorde, Tu-144 or replica?

You can basically only confuse the Concorde with the Tu-144 – or with a replica.

Want a size comparison? The Concorde was longer than a Boeing 757-200, but with around 25.6 meters of wingspan narrower than an Airbus A320. The Sud Aviation Caravelle and the BAC One-Eleven also date from the same time as the Concorde – the subsonic jets of the two partner companies.

Conclusion

The Concorde is a type you can no longer catch on approach, but can collect all the more deliberately. Delta wing, droop nose and twin nacelles make it unmistakable, and the serial number tells the story of each individual aircraft. With 18 surviving examples in Europe, the US and the Caribbean, it is one of the nicest long-term projects for spotters.