Concorde
British-French supersonic airliner (1969–2003)
Concorde ( KONG-kord, French: [kɔ̃kɔʁd] ) is a retired Anglo-French supersonic airliner jointly developed and manufactured by Sud Aviation and the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC).
Studies began in 1954 and a UK–France treaty followed in 1962, as the programme cost was estimated at £70 million (£1.77 billion in 2025).
Construction of six prototypes began in February 1965, with the first flight from Toulouse on 2 March 1969.
The market forecast was 350 aircraft, with manufacturers receiving up to 100 options from major airlines.
On 9 October 1975, it received its French certificate of airworthiness, and was certified by the UK CAA on 5 December.
Concorde is an aircraft design with a narrow fuselage permitting four-abreast seating for 92 to 128 passengers, an ogival delta wing, and a droop nose for landing visibility.
It is powered by four Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus 593 turbojets with variable engine intake ramps, and reheat for take-off and acceleration to supersonic speed.
Constructed from aluminium, it was the first airliner to have analogue fly-by-wire flight controls.
The airliner had transatlantic range while supercruising at twice the speed of sound for 75% of the distance.
Delays and cost overruns pushed costs to £1.5–2.1 billion in 1976 (£12–16.7 billion in 2025).
“Concorde” enters the record as british-French supersonic airliner (1969–2003). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Concorde, British-French and supersonic can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6505. The Library of Congress control number is sh85030645. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1954, 1962, 2025 and 1965.
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This entry incorporates text from “Concorde” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.