Background Information.

The Aerospatiale / BAC Concorde is a British - French turbojet-powered supersonic passenger airliner that was operated until 2003. It had a maximum speed over twice the speed of sound, at Mach 2.04 (1,354 mph or 2,180 km/h at cruise altitude), with seating for 92 to 128 passengers.

It was first flown in 1969, the production Concorde entered service in 1976 and continued flying for the next 27 years. It is one of only two supersonic transport aircraft to have been operated commercially, the other was the Soviet-built Tupolev Tu-144, which operated in the late 1970s.

Concorde was jointly developed and manufactured by Sud Aviation (later named Aérospatiale) and the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC) under an Anglo-French treaty. Twenty aircraft were built, including six prototypes and development aircraft. Air France and British Airways were the only airlines to purchase and fly Concorde.

The aircraft was used mainly by wealthy passengers who could afford to pay a high price in exchange for the aircraft's speed and luxury service. For example, in 1997, the round-trip ticket price from New York to London was $7,995 (equivalent to $12,700 in 2019), more than 30 times the cost of the cheapest option to fly this route.

The original programme cost estimate of £70 million met huge overruns and delays, with the program eventually costing around £1.3 billion. It was this extreme cost that became the main factor in the production run being much smaller than anticipated. Later, another factor which affected the viability of all supersonic transport programmes, was that supersonic flight could only be used on ocean-crossing routes, to prevent sonic boom disturbance over populated areas. With only seven airframes each being operated by the British and French, the per-unit cost was impossible to recoup, so the French and British governments absorbed the development costs.

British Airways and Air France were able to operate their Concordes at a profit, in spite of very high maintenance costs, because the aircraft was able to sustain a high ticket price.

Among other destinations Concorde flew regular trans-Atlantic flights from London's Heathrow Airport and Paris's Charles de Gualle Airport to John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia and Grantley Adams International Airport in Barbados. It flew these routes in less than half the time of other airliners The Concorde was also deployed by both airlines on numerous ‘special charter’ flights to many destinations around the world.