Fifty years ago, on January 21, 1976, British Airways Concorde G-BOAA took off from London to Bahrain at the precise moment that Air France Concorde F-BVFA departed from Paris, bound for Rio via Dakar. The supersonic era for passenger jets had begun. The sleek Concorde, the product of Anglo-French collabora-tion, could attain a cruising speed of roughly 1,350 mph, shattering the sound barrier and dramatically re-ducing travel time across the Atlantic. A favorite of the jet set and business elite, Concorde ultimately proved prohibitively expensive to operate. (Environmentalists also raised concerns about the aircraft’s emissions.) The catastrophic crash of Air France 4590 in July 2000, followed by the decline in air travel in the aftermath of 9/11, spelled the end of supersonic passenger travel. In 2003, the Concorde fleet was retired.
