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 experience from the Oklahoma City sonic boom tests led to the same environmental concerns that hindered the commercial success of Concorde. The American government cancelled its SST project in 1971, after having spent more than $1 billion. The only other large supersonic aircraft comparable to Concorde are strategic bombers, principally the Russian Tu-22, Tu-22M, M-50 (experimental), T-4 (experimental), Tu-160 and the American XB-70 (experimental) and B-1. Before Concorde's flight trials, developments in the civil aviation industry were largely accepted by governments and their respective electorates. Opposition to Concorde's noise, particularly on the east coast of the United States, forged a