On This Day: Why did Concorde stop flying in 2003?
This article is part of Yahoo's 'On This Day' series.
The pilot said as the plane touched down, ‘Concorde has become a legend today. Thank you for joining us for a moment of history.’
The last flight of Concorde was packed with celebrities including Joan Collins, Piers Morgan and Sir David Frost, who had flown on the supersonic jet 300 times.
Supermodel Christie Brinkley was on the flight, saying she couldn’t resist one last chance to, ‘Pop over to London.’
Before it took off, veteran Concorde pilot Mike Bannister, chief pilot of the craft said, ‘You will be flying at the edge of space. There the sky gets darker, you can see the curvature of the earth.
‘You will fly faster than a rifle bullet, at 23 miles a minute, faster than the world rotates.’
The last flight of Concorde on this day in November 2003 marked the end of the era of supersonic passenger flight.
Concorde was born of Anglo-French collaboration in the 1960s and 1970s (the name means harmony or agreement, referring to the treaty between Britain and France that led to its creation).
Watch: Nasa builds new supersonic aircraft dubbed ‘son of Concorde’
Both countries had separately begun to develop supersonic planes in the 1950s, but opted to work together.
The first Concorde flight took place in Toulouse in 1969, and commercial services began in 1976.
The top speed of Concorde was twice the speed of sound, 1,350mph, and the aircraft had just 100 seats.
On February 7th 1996, Concorde went from London to New York in just under two hours and 53 minutes.
But the plane was doomed to failure by a combination of technical problems and simple economics.
In July 2000, 114 people died when a Concorde crashed after taking off from Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris.
The crash prompted a £17 million upgrade to the fuel tanks.
In the wake of the crash, other technical problems followed: engine failure prompted one flight to turn back to London, and another had to cut speed when cracks appeared in a window.
One Air France Concorde had to return to Charles de Gaulle after it could not move its nose cone into position for supersonic speed.
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But it was economics that put paid to Concorde; with tickets at around £8000 for a round trip, it was a machine built for the super-rich.
At around the same time as Concorde rumbled onto the tarmac for the first time, Boeing unveiled its 747, capable of seating 400.
It was a machine built for the era of mass travel and mass tourism, and it arrived just as both started to boom in the 1970s.
Boeing sold hundreds of jets, while Concorde remained for the privileged few, and it operated at a loss for years.
It was licensed to fly until 2009, but rising costs and falling ticket sales spelt the end.
Jeremy Clarkson, who was on the final flight, wrote later, ‘With a crackling rumble, the last great reminder that Britain once was a force to be reckoned with, was gone.
‘Concorde doesn't understand profits or loss. It’s a machine. It knows only how to fly very, very fast across the Atlantic.
“But some machines become more than a collection of wires and glass and metal. They take on a personality and this is what makes their death hard to stomach.’
Watch: The rise and fall of supersonic air travel (but might it come back in 2029?)
