Concorde BMC Mini, the miniskirt, the Jaguar E-Type, the London Tube map and the Supermarine Spitfire. The type was retired in 2003, three years after the crash of Air France Flight 4590, in which all passengers and crew were killed. The general downturn in the commercial aviation industry after the September 11 attacks in 2001 and the end of maintenance support for Concorde by Airbus (the successor company of both Aérospatiale and BAC) also contributed. The origins of the Concorde project date to the early 1950s, when Arnold Hall, director of the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) asked Morien Morgan to form
Concorde and French governments that led to Concorde's construction, the name "Concorde" is from the French word "concorde" (), which has an English equivalent, "concord". Both words mean "agreement", "harmony" or "union". The name was officially changed to "Concord" by Harold Macmillan in response to a perceived slight by Charles de Gaulle. At the French roll-out in Toulouse in late 1967, the British Government Minister for Technology, Tony Benn, announced that he would change the spelling back to "Concorde". This created a nationalist uproar that died down when Benn stated that the suffixed "e" represented "Excellence, England, Europe and Entente (Cordiale)".