Concorde

Concorde was the only supersonic commercial airliner to enter regular passenger service and sustain it for decades. Jointly developed by British Aerospace and Aérospatiale, it flew its first commercial flights simultaneously from London and Paris on January 21, 1976, and operated without interruption for 27 years until its retirement following the Air France crash of July 25, 2000, which killed all 113 people on board. In its prime, Concorde crossed the North Atlantic in under 3.5 hours — a journey that took subsonic jets nearly twice as long.

At its cruising altitude of 18,000 metres (59,000 feet), Concorde flew in the stratosphere where the thin atmosphere reduced drag sufficiently to sustain Mach 2.04 using its four Rolls-Royce/SNECMA Olympus 593 afterburning turbojets. The aircraft heated to +127°C at its nose due to aerodynamic friction — which expanded the aluminium airframe by approximately 30 cm in flight. The iconic drooped nose, which lowered for takeoff and landing to give the pilots a view over the long ogival delta wing, became the aircraft’s defining visual feature.

Concorde never achieved commercial viability in the traditional sense. Only 14 aircraft entered passenger service (7 with British Airways, 7 with Air France), and the $200+ transatlantic fares made it accessible only to the wealthy and corporate elite. Yet its cultural impact was immense: for a generation, Concorde represented the pinnacle of technological ambition in commercial transport. After its retirement in 2003, no supersonic passenger aircraft entered service until the certification of Boom Supersonic’s Overture began in the late 2020s.