Commercial Supersonics

Short answer: Concorde was an Anglo-French supersonic airliner. A UK–France treaty of November 29, 1962 launched it, and it was developed and built by Sud Aviation (which became part of Aérospatiale in 1970) and the British Aircraft Corporation.

The first prototype flew from Toulouse on March 2, 1969. Air France and British Airways began scheduled service on January 21, 1976, and New York JFK flights started on October 17, 1977. It had an ogival delta wing, a droop nose for landing visibility and four Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus 593 turbojets with afterburners. Its regular cruise was Mach 2.02, about 1,340 mph (2,150 km/h), with a maximum altitude of 60,000 ft. A New York–Paris flight took just under 3.5 hours, compared with about seven to eight hours on a subsonic jet. Its top speed was capped by heat: the aluminum skin could only tolerate about 127 °C. Only 20 were built, and Air France and British Airways were the only customers, with seven airframes each. Sonic booms kept supersonic flights over the sea. On July 25, 2000, Air France Flight 4590 crashed after takeoff from Paris, killing 113 people. It was Concorde's only fatal accident, and service resumed in November 2001. Both airlines retired the aircraft in 2003, citing rising maintenance costs, lower demand after the crash and the post-9/11 slump. Air France's last commercial flight was on May 30, 2003, and British Airways' was on October 24, 2003. Eighteen are preserved. No supersonic airliner has flown passengers since. On January 28, 2025, Boom Supersonic's XB-1 demonstrator broke the sound barrier over the Mojave Desert, a test for its planned Overture airliner. The footage shows a British Airways Concorde landing at night with its nose drooped.