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 mayor Rudy Giuliani greeted the passengers. Concorde had suffered two previous non-fatal accidents that were similar to each other. Of the twenty aircraft built, 18 are still complete. Many are on display at museums in the United Kingdom, France, the United States, Germany and Barbados. The only supersonic airliner in direct competition with Concorde was the Soviet Tupolev Tu-144, nicknamed "Concordski" by Western European journalists for its outward similarity to Concorde. It had been alleged that Soviet espionage efforts had resulted in the theft of Concorde blueprints, supposedly to assist in the design of the Tu-144. As a result of