Air France Flight 4590 crash and possible remedies. Air France's Concorde operation had been a money-losing venture, but it is claimed that the aeroplane had been kept in service as a matter of national pride; British Airways claimed to make a profit on its Concorde operations. According to Jock Lowe, a Concorde pilot, up until the crash of Air France Flight 4590 at Paris, the British Airways Concorde operation made a net average profit of about £30m a year. Commercial service was resumed in November 2001 after a £17m safety improvement service, until the remaining aircraft were retired in 2003. The official investigation was
Concorde aircraft histories Concorde aircraft histories Twenty Concorde aircraft were built, six for development and 14 for commercial service. These were All but two of these aircraft are preserved. The two prototype aircraft were used to expand the flight envelope of the aircraft as quickly as possible and prove that the design calculations for supersonic flight were correct. Both pre-production aircraft were used to further develop the design of the aircraft. Changes to design include different wing plan form, more fuel, different engine standard, different air intake systems etc. The production aircraft were different in many ways to the original aircraft necessitating re-examining