The Concorde first flew over a quater of a century ago, and yet it remains the pinnacle of civil aviation development for one reason - speed. The Concorde is the only aircraft in the world operating scheduled passenger flights at supersonic speed.
An engineering masterpiece, the Concorde was the result of a collaborative venture between the aviation industries of Britain and France. It dates back to design work for a supersonic airliner carried out by Sud Aviation and Bristol, their respective Super Caravelle and Bristol 233 designs being remarkably similar in configuration to each other. The forecast high costs of any SST program and the similarities in the designs led to a 1962 government agreement between France and Britain which resulted in the British Aircraft Corporation (into which Bristol had been merged) and SudAviation (which became a part of Aerospatiale in 1970) joining to design and develop such an aircraft.
Talks with airlines in the 1960s resulted in a relatively long range aircraft design capable of flying trans Atlantic sectors (although for a time Sud offered a short haul version). Design of the airframe was refined to feature a highly complex delta wing featuring cambering and ogival leading edges with pairs of engines mounted in pods under the wing undersurface. The slender fuselage features a high fineness ratio to keep supersonic drag to a minimum, while the fuel system was designed to trim the aircraft longitudinally by transferring fuel between tanks to combat the change in the centre of pressure as the aircraft accelerates. Another feature is the variable geometry nose which is lowered while taxying, on takeoff and landing to improve the flightcrew's visibility.
A lengthy development program following the Concorde's first flight on 2nd March 1969 meant that it did not enter into airline service until January 1976. On 25th July 2000, Air France Concode Flight 4590 crashed in Gonesse, France, killing all 100 passengers and nine crew on board the flight, and four people on the ground. It was the first and only fatal incident involving the Concorde. According to the official investigation conducted by the French accident investigation bureau (BEA), it was caused by a titanium strip, part of a thrust reverser, that fell from a Continental Airlines DC-10 that had taken off about four minutes earlier.
The crash of the Air France Concorde proved to be the beginning of the end. The accident led to a programme of major modifications. Normal commercial operations resumed on 7th November 2001 by British Airways and Air France, who flew one aircraft each (aircraft G-BOAE and F-BTSD).
On 10th April 2003, British Airways and Air France simultaneously announced that they would retire Concorde later that year. They cited low passenger numbers following the July 2000 crash, compounded by the worldwide slump in air travel following the 9/11 World Trade Centre tragedy, and rising maintenance costs.
It has been suggested and is widely believed that Concorde was not withdrawn for the reasons given, but that during the grounding of the Concordes it became apparent to the airlines that they could actually make more revenue carrying their first class passengers subsonically.
On 30th May 2003 the last commercial Air France flight landed back at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris from New York. The very last flight for Air France was made on 27th June 2003 when F-BVFC flew from Paris to its place of construction in Toulouse, for preservation.
