Today in History—January 21: When Supersonic Travel Took Off

Stop, hey, what’s that sound? Everybody look what’s going…up.

That sound was a sonic boom from Concorde, the world’s first turbojet-powered supersonic passenger aircraft.

Developed in the 1960s as a joint project between France and Great Britain, Concorde marked its debut with two simultaneous takeoffs on this day in 1976: a British Airways flight from London to Bahrain and an Air France flight from Paris to Rio.

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And actually, you probably wouldn’t have heard the sound—unless you were adrift in the ocean. The shock waves were so intense that Concorde was largely restricted to flying over unpopulated areas, which limited where and how often it could fly.

For a plane that looked like an origami experiment, it was a technological marvel. Concorde flew at more than twice the speed of sound and twice as high as conventional passenger planes, cutting transatlantic travel times in half. Aimed at luxury and business travelers, the experience wasn’t all that indulgent by modern standards, despite a hefty ticket price. First class offered decent meals and champagne, but there were no lie-flat seats, private suites, or onboard chefs. Seats were narrow, and the cabin was tight.

In its heyday, there were 14 Concorde jets in service—7 with Air France and 7 with British Airways. Each typically made two flights per day, mostly between London, New York, and Paris. Expanding the network was expensive, and the aircrafts were notoriously costly to maintain.

There was one other problem: Concorde was thirsty. It burned roughly one ton of fuel per passenger on a plane that could carry about 140 people.

For comparison, a flight from New York to London today on a Boeing 747 might burn about 10 or 11 tons of fuel per hour—while carrying roughly 500 people.

Concorde, in other words, was guzzling fuel while passengers sipped champagne.

With high fuel and maintenance costs and limited routes, the futuristic jet never quite became the commercial triumph people expected. Then a tragic Concorde crash in 2000 killed everyone on board, along with several people on the ground, severely damaging public confidence in the aircraft. A year later the September 11 attacks sharply reduced demand for international air travel altogether.

In 2003 Concorde—the first and so far only commercial supersonic passenger jet fleet—called it quits. It had shrunk the Atlantic and made time zones feel negotiable. But in the end, speed alone wasn’t enough to keep it aloft.

Famous Birthdays

1857: Joseph Paxson Iddings—American geologist

1905: Christian Dior—French designer

1884: Roger Nash Baldwin—American activist, cofounder of the ACLU

1941: Plácido Domingo—Spanish-born singer