On the morning of January 21, 1976, a pair of Concordes — one each from British Airways and Air France —took off simultaneously on what would be the aircraft's first commercial supersonic flights with fare paying passengers.
The British Airways jet took off from London's Heathrow Airport bound for Brazil with a stop in Senegal while the Air France flight left Paris Orly Airport headed for Bahrain.
Later that year, Air France and British Airways put the cutting-edge jet into service — making daily flights from Europe to the US. The jet was retired from service nearly 30 years later.
A decade after the retirement of the jet, we remember the awesome experience that was flying on the Concorde.
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As soon as Chuck Yeager crossed the sound barrier in 1947, commercial aviation companies set into motion with plans to take passengers past Mach 1.
On November 29, 1962, the governments of France and Great Britain signed a concord agreement to build a supersonic jet liner, hence the name of the plane that resulted: Concorde.
Together, Aérospatiale — a predecessor of Airbus Industries — and British Aircraft Corporation agreed to produce a four-engine, delta-wing supersonic airliner.
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