Aérospatiale/Bac Concorde

Quad Jet

Concorde remains the only supersonic airliner to achieve sustained commercial service, flying passengers at twice the speed of sound from 1976 to 2003. Developed jointly by Britain's BAC and France's Aérospatiale in a landmark Cold War-era collaboration, the delta-winged aircraft could cross the Atlantic in under three and a half hours — less than half the time of subsonic jets — cruising at Mach 2.02 and 60,000 feet, well above all other traffic and weather. Its four Rolls-Royce/SNECMA Olympus 593 turbojets with reheat produced 38,050 pounds of thrust each, enabling the aircraft to accelerate through Mach 1 without the sonic boom reaching the ground until well offshore. Concorde held the record for fastest transatlantic crossing by a commercial airliner and remains the only civilian aircraft certified to routinely exceed Mach 2. The aircraft's operating envelope was extraordinary: maximum operating speed of Mach 2.04 (about 1,350 mph), service ceiling of 60,000 feet, and a range of 3,900 nautical miles. Its slender fuselage seated just 92-128 passengers in a 4-abreast configuration, and the droop-nose design — lowered 5 degrees for taxi and 12.5 degrees for landing — gave pilots visibility during the high-angle approaches necessitated by the delta wing's aerodynamics. Approach speeds around 162 knots were significantly higher than conventional jets, and the aircraft required longer runways. Fuel consumption was prodigious: Concorde burned roughly the same fuel as a 747 while carrying a quarter of the passengers, limiting operations to premium transatlantic routes for British Airways and Air France. Only twenty Concordes were built, with commercial service ending in 2003 following the 2000 Paris crash, rising maintenance costs, and post-9/11 travel downturns. No supersonic airliner has entered service since. The aircraft's technological legacy endures in modern supersonic research programs, and its distinctive ogee delta wing and reheat thunder remain iconic symbols of aviation's brief supersonic age.