The history of the Concorde: the rise and farewell of a legend

No other airliner has drawn as many people to the fence as this one: a slender fuselage, a delta wing, the drooped nose on approach and a thunder you could hear for miles. The history of the Concorde is the story of a technical triumph that never paid off commercially – and of an aircraft that, more than two decades after its last flight, still draws spotters to museums and airport fences. This article takes you from the idea in the early 1960s through scheduled service to the farewell in 2003 and shows where you can photograph the surviving aircraft today.

The Concorde in brief

The Concorde was a supersonic passenger aircraft developed jointly by Britain and France. It flew in scheduled service from 1976 to 2003 with Air France and British Airways, mainly across the North Atlantic, and took its passengers from Europe to New York in a good three hours at about twice the speed of sound. Only 20 were built. A serious crash in 2000, the aviation crisis after September 11, 2001 and high costs ended its career. Today 18 aircraft stand in museums, at airports or in storage – one of them in Germany.

The idea: a supersonic jet for Europe

In the late 1950s, teams in both Britain and France were working on concepts for a passenger aircraft that flies faster than sound. Neither country could manage the project alone. On November 29, 1962, both governments therefore signed an agreement on joint development. The costs of research and construction were split in half, and the industrial partners were the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC) and Sud Aviation, later part of Aérospatiale. The Olympus 593 engines were developed in cooperation between Rolls-Royce and the French manufacturer Snecma.

The experience of this cooperation had a lasting effect: Airbus itself points out that the British-French collaboration helped the later European consortium avoid mistakes such as politically motivated duplicate final assembly lines. The program still became more expensive than expected: the 1962 estimate was 70 million pounds, and in the end well over a billion pounds were on the books.

First flight in 1969 and the race with the Tu-144

The French prototype 001 (F-WTSS) took off on its first flight on March 2, 1969 in Toulouse. Test pilot André Turcat stayed in the air for 29 minutes, not yet going faster than 480 km/h. On April 9, 1969, the British prototype 002 (G-BSST) followed, which Brian Trubshaw flew from Filton to the military airfield at Fairford. On October 1, 1969, the 001 broke the sound barrier for the first time. Twice the speed of sound followed as testing progressed.

Europe wasn’t first, though. The Soviet Tupolev Tu-144 had already taken off on December 31, 1968 and became the first passenger aircraft to fly supersonic on June 5, 1969. Its career, however, went unhappily: in 1973 a Tu-144 crashed after a demonstration at the Paris Air Show. It flew in scheduled service only from November 1977 to June 1978; after a Tu-144D had to make an emergency landing on a test flight in May 1978, passenger operations were discontinued.

Feature	Concorde	Tupolev Tu-144
First flight	March 2, 1969	December 31, 1968
First supersonic flight	October 1, 1969	June 5, 1969
Passenger service	January 1976 to October 2003	November 1977 to June 1978
Operators in scheduled service	Air France, British Airways	Aeroflot
Example in Germany	F-BVFB, Technik Museum Sinsheim	77112, Technik Museum Sinsheim

Options without orders

At the end of the 1960s it looked like a sales success. At the time of the first flight, 16 airlines held a total of 74 options, at times over 100. But the oil crisis, rising fuel prices, competition from new widebody jets such as the Boeing 747 and above all the sonic boom made interested buyers drop out. Because the boom was considered unacceptable over populated areas, the Concorde was allowed to fly over land only at subsonic speed. That left almost only routes over the sea as economically viable.

In the end, only the two flag carriers of the manufacturing countries bought it: Air France and British Airways received seven aircraft each. With prototypes, pre-production and test aircraft, production came to exactly 20 Concordes.

How the Concorde worked

At Mach 2 different rules apply than in subsonic flight. You can still see many of the Concorde’s solutions today when you stand in front of a museum example.

• Delta wing: The slender, swept wing without a separate horizontal stabilizer creates little drag at high speed and, in slow flight, lift through vortices at the leading edge. The price was that the Concorde had to land at a very high angle of attack.
• Droop nose: So that the pilots could see anything at all on the steep approach, the nose could be lowered – to 5 degrees for taxiing and takeoff, and to 12.5 degrees for landing. In cruise it was raised, and a visor protected the windshield.
• Afterburners: With afterburning, the four Olympus 593 engines delivered about 169 kN of thrust each. The afterburners ran on takeoff and while passing through the range around the speed of sound, roughly between Mach 0.95 and 1.7.
• Fuel as trim ballast: In the transition to supersonic flight, the wing’s center of pressure shifts aft. Instead of compensating with control surfaces, the crew pumped fuel back and forth between tanks and thereby shifted the center of gravity.
• Fly-by-wire: The Concorde was the first airliner with an electrically transmitted flight control system, still analog at the time.

Parameter	Value
Length	61.66 m
Wingspan	25.6 m
Maximum takeoff weight	about 185 t
Engines	4 × Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus 593 Mk 610
Thrust per engine with afterburner	about 169 kN
Range	about 7,200 km
Flight deck crew	3 (two pilots, one flight engineer)
Seats	92 to 120, up to 128 in high-density seating

Interesting for comparison: the Concorde was longer than a Boeing 757-200 but didn’t even have the wingspan of an Airbus A320. In the cabin, passengers sat four abreast and the windows were small – comfort here meant above all time gained.

27 years in scheduled service

After certification in France and Britain in 1975, the first passenger flights started simultaneously on January 21, 1976: Air France from Paris, British Airways from London Heathrow. The US opened its airports only after protests and litigation, Washington Dulles in May 1976 and New York JFK in October 1977. The New York route became the showpiece route, flown by British Airways under the callsign Speedbird – what callsigns and flight numbers are all about is explained in the article Callsign and flight number.

There were two curious extra chapters. With Braniff, Concordes flew in subsonic mode between Washington and Dallas/Fort Worth from January 1979 to May 1980 – with a Braniff crew of its own and its own operating license. With Singapore Airlines, British Airways jointly marketed a connection via Bahrain to Singapore, while flight operations stayed with BA. For this, G-BOAD wore the colors of the Asian airline on one side of the fuselage.

The record for the fastest Atlantic crossing in scheduled service is held by G-BOAD: on February 7, 1996 it flew from New York to London in 2 hours, 52 minutes and 59 seconds. An Air France Concorde, F-BVFD, was already history by then – it was parked in 1982 and scrapped in 1994.

July 25, 2000: Flight 4590

Until the summer of 2000, the Concorde was considered one of the safest airliners. Then Air France Flight 4590, a charter flight from Paris Charles de Gaulle to New York, took off with the aircraft F-BTSC. A few minutes earlier, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10 of another airline had lost a metal strip on the same runway. The Concorde ran over it, a tire burst, and debris damaged a tank in the left wing. The leaking fuel ignited, two engines lost power, and the landing gear would not retract. About two minutes after liftoff, the aircraft crashed into a hotel in Gonesse. 113 people died, all 109 on board and four on the ground.

The fleet stayed grounded for over a year afterward. The manufacturers reinforced tanks with Kevlar linings, secured electrical wiring and developed especially resistant tires. On November 7, 2001, Air France and British Airways resumed scheduled service – a few weeks after the September 11 attacks, which plunged the entire industry into a deep crisis.

2003: the farewell

The return succeeded technically, but not commercially. Demand in the premium segment collapsed after 2001, and a fleet of a few specialized aircraft more than 25 years old was expensive to maintain. In 2003 both airlines announced the end. Air France ended scheduled service at the end of May 2003 and then delivered its aircraft to museums. British Airways flew until October 24, 2003, when the last scheduled aircraft from New York landed at Heathrow. The final full stop was set by G-BOAF, the last Concorde built: on November 26, 2003, it flew a lap of honor over Bristol and landed at Filton, where it now stands in the Aerospace Bristol museum.

Where you can see the Concorde today

Of the 20 Concordes built, 18 still exist, most of them on public display. For spotters, that is a nice collecting task: each aircraft has its own history and its own registration.

Location	Registration	Note
Technik Museum Sinsheim, Germany	F-BVFB	displayed together with the Tu-144 77112
Musée de l’Air et de l’Espace, Paris-Le Bourget	F-WTSS, F-BTSD	prototype 001 and an Air France production aircraft
Aeroscopia, Toulouse	F-WTSB, F-BVFC	test aircraft and Air France aircraft
Musée Delta, Athis-Mons near Paris	F-WTSA	French pre-production aircraft
Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport	F-BVFF	displayed on the airport grounds
Manchester Airport, Runway Visitor Park	G-BOAC	in its own hangar, interior visit by tour
London Heathrow Airport	G-BOAB	parked, not open to the public
Aerospace Bristol, Filton	G-BOAF	the last Concorde built and the last to fly
IWM Duxford, Brooklands, Yeovilton, East Fortune	G-AXDN, G-BBDG, G-BSST, G-BOAA	four more examples in British museums
Intrepid Museum, New York	G-BOAD	the 1996 record holder; removed for restoration in 2023, check status beforehand
Museum of Flight, Seattle	G-BOAG	flew the last scheduled flight from New York on October 24, 2003
Udvar-Hazy Center, Virginia	F-BVFA	in the Smithsonian’s hangar
Barbados	G-BOAE	at Grantley Adams Airport, check access beforehand

In Germany, there is no way around Sinsheim: the Air France aircraft F-BVFB landed for the last time on June 24, 2003 and now stands in the Technik Museum Sinsheim, which forms a museum group together with the Technik Museum Speyer. The combination with the Tu-144, which came to Sinsheim in 2001 not on its own flight but by transport, is unique worldwide. If all you want is a Concorde silhouette, the Flugausstellung Hermeskeil has a walk-in replica with a café – but that is not an original.

In Great Britain, a Concorde visit combines well with spotting. At the Manchester Runway Visitor Park, G-BOAC stands right next to current scheduled traffic, and around London Heathrow Airport, G-BOAB could long be seen from the spot on Myrtle Avenue. Whether it is currently visible there is best checked before the trip. More destinations for aviation trips are collected in the spotting bucket list.

How to keep your sightings neatly sorted is covered in the article Documenting sightings. If you like classics in general, you will find more destinations in Spotting rare aircraft and the overview of aircraft graveyards and boneyards.

What remains of the Concorde

After 2003 there was no more scheduled supersonic traffic. The widebody jets that had overtaken the Concorde economically shaped the following decades – first the Boeing 747-400, later the Airbus A380 and efficient twinjets such as the Boeing 787-9 or the Airbus A350-900. Instead of speed, range, seat costs and fuel consumption counted. How the size relationships have developed since then is shown in the article on the largest aircraft in the world.

For spotters, the Concorde remains a special case: an aircraft you will never see in the air again, but which waits for you at more than a dozen places. Many still remember guest appearances at German airports, and at airshows it regularly drew all eyes – events with historic aircraft can be found in the overview of airshows in Europe.

Conclusion

The Concorde was a technical masterpiece: twice the speed of sound, a delta wing, a droop nose and a flight control system that shaped later airliners. Commercially it remained a prestige project with only two customers, limited by the sonic boom and high costs. The 2000 crash and the crisis after 2001 accelerated the end, and in 2003 it landed for the last time. What remains are 18 aircraft you can visit in Europe and North America – in Germany at Sinsheim, side by side with its Soviet rival.