Farewell Concorde

The supersonic Concorde service of British Airways came to an end on October 23, 2003, when the last flight with fare paying passengers took off for New York. Media report quoted British Airways (BA) chairman Lord Marshall as saying: "Everyone has enormous pride in all that she has achieved but there is inevitable sadness that we have to move on and say farewell". In 1956, Britain and France began working separately on an aircraft that would fly at twice the speed of sound. BA and Air France made a joint announcement on the retirement in April and the French Concorde’s final flight was in May.

Concorde never recovered after a horrific crash near Paris Charles de Gaulle airport three years ago, in which 113 people died. BA decided to retire the famous aircraft after 27 years because it was no longer profitable.

As the last ever Concorde flight landed on Heathrow Airport on a Friday afternoon a wave of applause followed by a huge cheer went up from the thousands of people gathered there for the historical event.

The sight of the three supersonic jets landing one after another was itself an extraordinary event for the enthusiasts in the crowd some whom had traveled from as far away as South Africa.

The last transatlantic flight carried 100 celebrities from New York and touched down at 16:05 BST. Before entering the Concorde cockpit for the last time, Captain Mike Bannister said he was "proud and privileged" to fly the plane back from New York. "What we have tried to do is to make the retirement of Concorde a celebration – something that both the public and airline can look back at with pride".

Concorde fact sheet: 1 October 1969 : First Supersonic flight.

13 September, 1970: First landing at Heathrow.

26 September, 1973: First non-stop crossing of the Atlantic.

23 November, 1973: Prince Philips flies supersonic for the first time. The husband of Queen Elizabeth II, the Duke of Edinburgh began the Royal Family’s long association with Concorde by joining the test flight in 1972. The aircraft was used for several overseas state visits in the following years.

22 November, 1977: BA and Air France begin services to New York. Getting permission for Concorde to land for the crucial North Atlantic route was a long saga due to local concerns over noise. Despite technical data suggesting it would be no worse than an existing Boeing 707 the battle went all the way to the Supreme Court America’s highest where the ruling eventually went Concorde’s way.

1 November, 1986: First round the world charter flight, total flying time 31 hours 51 minutes.

There were several rudder failures in Concorde’s later years. Experts said they were not a major safety concern because in theory the rudder was not crucial for flying Concorde’s except in some situations such as cross wind or engine failure. However it was an embarrassing problem for flagship aircraft and engineers struggled to solve it introducing a rudder replacement programme in 1992.

31 May, 2003: Last Air France Concorde flight. The last commercial journey by a French Concorde left New York’s JFK Airport at 12:18 GMT and arrived at Paris Charles de Gaulle three hours later. The Airline’s five Concordes have all gone on public display, three in France, one in the US and one in the Germany for which the Aircraft was cut into pieces for the final journey by road and canal before being reassembled.

Both BA and France are planning to keep the Concordes as museum pieces or keep them in readiness to fly when the occasion demands it.

24 October, 2003: Last BA Concorde flight.