Concorde with Concorde beating other British design icons such as the Mini, mini skirt, Jaguar E-Type, Tube map, the World Wide Web, K2 telephone box and the Supermarine Spitfire. The heads of France and the United Kingdom flew Concorde many times. Presidents Georges Pompidou, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and François Mitterrand regularly used Concorde as French flagman aircraft in foreign visits. Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Ministers Edward Heath, Jim Callaghan, Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Tony Blair took Concorde in some charter flights such as the Queen's trips to Barbados on her Silver Jubilee in 1977, in 1987 and in 2003,
Concorde "for many years to come". The chances for keeping Concorde in service were stifled by Airbus's lack of support for continued maintenance. It has been suggested that Concorde was not withdrawn for the reasons usually given but that it became apparent during the grounding of Concorde that the airlines could make more profit carrying first-class passengers subsonically. A lack of commitment to Concorde from Director of Engineering Alan MacDonald was cited as having undermined BA's resolve to continue operating Concorde. Other reasons why the attempted revival of Concorde never happened relate to the fact that the narrow fuselage did not