Concorde Concorde The Aérospatiale/BAC Concorde () is a British-French turbojet-powered supersonic passenger airliner that was operated from 1976 until 2003. It had a maximum speed over twice the speed of sound at Mach 2.04 ( at cruise altitude), with seating for 92 to 128 passengers. First flown in 1969, Concorde entered service in 1976 and continued flying for the next 27 years. It is one of only two supersonic transports to have been operated commercially; the other is the Soviet-built Tupolev Tu-144, which operated in passenger service from 1977 to 1978. Concorde was jointly developed and manufactured by Sud Aviation (later
Concorde a rushed development programme, the first Tu-144 prototype was substantially different from the preproduction machines, but both were cruder than Concorde. The Tu-144"S" had a significantly shorter range than Concorde. Jean Rech, Sud Aviation, attributed this to two things, a very heavy powerplant with an intake twice as long as that on Concorde, and low-bypass turbofan engines with too-high a bypass ratio which needed afterburning for cruise. The aircraft had poor control at low speeds because of a simpler supersonic wing design; in addition the Tu-144 required braking parachutes to land while Concorde used anti-lock brakes. The Tu-144 had two