On this day in 1976, the British Airways Concorde (G-BOAA) made its inaugural commercial flight between London-Heathrow (LHR) and Bahrain (BAH), which mostly flew overland and a good part of the flight was sub-sonic. But on this day, yet another commercial Concorde flight took off at precisely the same time as the G-BOAA operating between Paris-Charles de Gaule and Rio-De-Janeiro (via Dakar). Incidentally, this aircraft (with tail number F-BVFA) was also featured in the James Bond movie Moonraker (released 1979). Without a doubt, this supersonic marvel (the Soviet Tu-144 aircraft deserving a handshake too) has proved to be a remarkable achievement in aviation engineering.
[perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Concorde was developed from an Anglo-French government initiative which started in the 60s that combined the manufacturing ingenuity of Aérospatiale and The British Aircraft Cooperation. Its first test flight was on 2 March 1969 and it entered commercial service in 1976. It was a supersonic turbojet-powered passenger airliner that flew transatlantic flights in less than half the time of other airliners. Sadly, after its only crash of Air France Flight 4590 on 25 July 2000 and the decrease in air travel post the 9/11 attacks, coupled with rising maintenance costs, both British Airways and Air France ended their Concorde flights in 2003 after 27 years of service. [/perfectpullquote]
