Airlines spell end of supersonic Concorde

British Airways and Air France today signalled the end of nearly three decades of supersonic passenger flights by announcing that Concorde would retire from service at the end of October 2003.

And aviation experts reckoned it could be as long as another three decades before any passenger plane approaching the 1,350mph speed of Concorde would be built.

In the meantime, travellers wanting to get across the Atlantic in a hurry will have to settle for journey times twice as long as those of Concorde on which passengers currently pay as much as €12,000 for a transatlantic flight.

Both BA and Air France blamed a passenger downturn and rising maintenance costs for their decision to retire Concorde.

The final clipping of Concorde’s wings ends an era of supersonic flight that began on the last day of 1968 when a Soviet Tupelov Tu-144 – soon dubbed Konkordski – took off on a test flight from Moscow.

The Anglo-French Concorde made its first flight two months later and went into passenger service in 1976.

While the Konkordski project petered out after a Tu-144 crashed at the Paris Air show in 1973, Concorde flew for years without a major incident. But in July 2000, an Air France Concorde crashed near Paris killing all 109 people on board and four on the ground.

By the time the modified aircraft went back into service in November 2001, both BA and Air France, whose supersonic services were almost exclusively on the London-New York and Paris-New York route, faced mounting problems.

There was the general American economic downturn, the aftermath of September 11 and the continuing reluctance of cost-cutting companies to allow executives to fly Concorde.

Together with the rising maintenance costs, these problems signalled the end for the 100-seater aircraft.

BA’s chief executive Rod Eddington said: “Concorde has served us well and we are extremely proud to have flown this marvellous and unique aircraft for the past 27 years.

“This is the end of a fantastic era in world aviation, but bringing forward Concorde’s retirement is a prudent business decision at a time when we are having to make difficult decisions right across the airline.”

He said he was determined to make the aircraft’s last six months “a time for celebration” and the airline immediately launched a series of special Concorde deals.

Mr Eddington added: “Concorde changed the way people travelled. With its going, we must lose some of the romance from aviation. Concorde looked fantastic. You cannot lose such an aircraft without shedding a tear.”

He said there was no question of selling BA’s seven Concordes to another company. They would – most likely – end up in museums.

While Air France will cease its Concorde transatlantic services on May 31, BA will carry on with London to New York flights until the end of October.

Mr Eddington said that during the aircraft’s last few days, some flights might operate from airports other than Heathrow so more people could see the plane before it went out of service.

Capable of cruising at heights of 60,000 ft – about 20,000ft higher than a conventional aircraft –

Concorde has carried more than 2.5 million passengers.

Typically taking three hours 20 minutes for a London-New York journey, Concorde’s record transatlantic flight time is two hours 54 minutes.