One of my never fulfilled dreams was to fly the Concorde from London to New York! One of the most beautiful planes I have ever seen with all of its accompanying mystique and prestige.
This week was the anniversary of the first landing of Concorde at John F. Kennedy Airport on 19th October 1977, after a 19-month battle against the jet on the grounds of noise.
Scheduled Concorde flights began on 21 January 1976 from London to Bahrain and Paris–Rio de Janeiro (via Dakar) routes. Paris-Caracas route (via Azores) followed on 10th April, 1976. Air France and British Airways both began service to Washington Dulles International Airport, on 24 May 1976.
While the US authorities allowed Concorde to fly to New York, New York’s Port Authority banned the jet from its airports leading to a Supreme Court fight which finished on 17th of October 1977.
Just two days later, an Air France Concorde touched down at 11:08 a.m. after a 6,1000 km (3,800 m) flight from Toulouse, France after a three hours and 46 minute flight. Commandant Jean Franchi (AF) and Brian Walpole (BA) shared the controls.
Scheduled service from Paris and London to JFK began on 22nd November 1977. Concorde’s fastest transatlantic crossing was on 7 February 1996 when it completed the New York to London flight in 2 hours 52 minutes and 59 seconds.
This documentary sums up the developments leading to the Concorde’s arrival at JFK 1977,when an
British Airways Concorde ended up carrying more than 2.5m passengers supersonically on almost 50,000 flights.
On 24 October 2003, British Airways withdrew Concorde, bringing to a close the world’s only supersonic passenger service. The final scheduled commercial flight was BA002 from JFK operated by G-BOAG. Air France flew its final JFK-CDG flight on 30th May 2003.
This was the last flight from NYC:
BA’s seven Concordes are now located in Barbados, Edinburgh, Filton, Manchester, New York and Seattle with one at London Heathrow. I have seen all of them except for the ones at Bilton and Barbados.
Air France’s are at Paris Le Bourget Airport, Sinsheim (the only place in the world where you can see the Anglo-French and Russian supersonic planes near each other), Dulles and Toulouse
Did you ever fly the Concorde?
My Pinterest Concorde page is here! Enjoy!
Thank you for the reminder of the good old days. From start to finish, the Concorde experience was a joy. I would gladly trade any of today’s first class cabins that most “boardingarea bloggers” constantly drool over, if only to return to the Concorde. It was always about personalized service and travel time saved—-leaving LHR at 10:00 AM and arriving at JFK at 9:00 AM on the same day. Perhaps one day