Concorde's first commercial flight

Concorde was a supersonic airliner built jointly by the British Aircraft Corporation and France's Aerospatiale under a 1962 treaty between the two governments. It first flew in 1969 and could cruise at about twice the speed of sound, around 2,150 km/h, at up to 18,000 metres, with four Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus 593 turbojets fitted with afterburners.

On 21 January 1976 the two national airlines started scheduled supersonic service at the same time. At 11:40 GMT a British Airways Concorde took off from London Heathrow for Bahrain, and an Air France Concorde left Paris Charles de Gaulle for Rio de Janeiro via Dakar. Services to Washington followed in May 1976 and to New York in 1977, where the flight across the Atlantic took about three and a half hours.

Only 20 Concordes were built, and just 14 flew with airlines. After the crash of an Air France Concorde near Paris in July 2000 and a downturn in air travel, both airlines retired the type in 2003. Concorde remains the only supersonic airliner to have flown regular passenger services for decades.