The Concorde was conceived in 1962 as a British/French project to create a supersonic passenger liner. It was intended to hold at least 100 passengers and have a cruising speed of Mach 2, ushering in a new age of supersonic commercial flight. Unfortunately, the Concorde's full potential was never exploited, and subsonic passenger flight remains the norm even today.

The first prototype, the Concorde 001, was assembled in France, and flew on 2 March, 1969. Britain's 002 flew a month later. Two pre-production Concordes and two test airframes were created after the prototypes, to be used in further stress testing. The first production craft flew on 6 December, 1973.

The first four production models were test flown in both tropical and arctic climates to assess performance. On 1 September, 1975, a Concorde became the first passenger aircraft to make four trans-Atlantic flights in one day.

Air France and and British Airways began commercial Concorde service simultaneously on 21 January, 1976. Seventy-four Concordes were originally reserved by 16 airlines, but cancelled their orders when the highly expensive aircraft were banned by many major airports, due to their excessive noise and pollution. Consequently, production stopped after only 16 Concordes had been produced.

Concorde Specifications

Exciting statistics:

• Length - 62.1m (203 ft 9 in)
• Wing span - 25.56m (83 ft, 10 in)
• Capacity - 185,065kg (408,000 lb)
• Cruising Speed - Mach 2.2
• Range - 6,580km (4,090 miles)
• Powerplant - Four Rolls-Royce/SNECMA Olympus 593 Mk 610 turbojets