Concorde Jets Pushed Into Retirement

Concorde, the needle-nosed aircraft for the super-rich and super-rushed, is retiring after a quarter-century of service, its British and French operators announced last month. “Never has such a beautiful object been designed and built by man,” Air France president Jean-Cyril Spinetta said as he announced his company’s five supersonic jets were being grounded for good. Concorde thus goes the way of the gilded carriage, the Orient Express and the Bugatti Royale as emblems of the rich and mobile.

For a quarter-century, business executives and stars asserted their status by boarding the delta-winged marvel, a product of 1960s technology and optimism, happily spending thousands more dollars to save a few hours. But filling the 100 seats on a Concorde has become increasingly difficult because of the global economic downturn, the impact of the Sept. 11 attacks on transatlantic travel and a horrific crash on July 25, 2000, that tarnished Concorde’s safety record.

BA said its seven Concorde jets will stop flying from the end of October, but didn’t give a date for the last scheduled flight. Air France announced its supersonic flights would end by May 31.

U.S. authorities, repelled by sonic booms, effectively killed Concorde’s viability by refusing to allow it to exceed the speed of sound over land.