Airfix 1/144 Concorde Gift Set A50189

The Aérospatiale/BAC Concorde was a British–French supersonic passenger airliner that was in service from 1976 to 2003.

With seats for 92 to 128 passengers, it had a top speed of Mach 2.04 (1,354 mph or 2,180 km/h at cruise altitude) and a maximum speed of over twice the speed of sound.

Concorde was first flown in 1969 and entered service in 1976, serving for 27 years.

It is one of just two commercially operational supersonic transports; the other is the Soviet-built Tupolev Tu-144, which flew in the late 1970s. 

Sud Aviation (later Aérospatiale) and the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC) collaborated on Concorde's development and production under an Anglo-French treaty.

Six prototypes and development aircraft were among the twenty aircraft constructed.

Concorde was only purchased and flown by Air France and British Airways.

The aircraft was mostly utilised by wealthy passengers who could afford to pay a premium for the aircraft's speed and luxurious service.

For instance, a round-trip ticket from New York to London in 1997 cost $7,995 (equivalent to $12,900 in 2020), which was more than 30 times the cost of the lowest choice to fly this route. 

The initial cost estimate for the programme was £70 million (£311 million in 2021). 

Due to massive cost overruns and delays, the project ended up costing £1.3 billion (£3.4 billion in 2021).

The fact that the production run was substantially smaller than expected was due to this astronomical expense.

Later, to avoid sonic boom disturbance over inhabited regions, supersonic aircraft could only be employed on ocean-crossing routes, which harmed the profitability of all supersonic transport programmes.

The per-unit cost was impossible to recoup with only seven airframes operated by the British and French governments, hence the French and British governments absorbed the development expenditures.

After purchasing their aircraft from their respective governments at a considerable discount in relation to the program's development and procurement expenditures, British Airways and Air France were able to operate Concorde at a profit.

Concorde conducted frequent transatlantic flights between London Heathrow Airport and Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia, and Grantley Adams International Airport in Barbados, among other locations.

Concorde planes were retired in 2003, three years after Air France Flight 4590 crashed, killing all passengers and crew.

The retirement of Concorde was influenced by the general decline in the commercial aviation industry following the September 11 attacks in 2001, as well as the end of Airbus' Concorde maintenance assistance.

On the 26th November 2003, the last British Airways Concorde G-BOAF flew low over her birth city of Bristol, before landing at the Filton airfield factory site where she had been built just 24 years earlier.

She would be the last Concorde to fly, effectively bringing to an end the historic era of supersonic passenger aviation.