Concorde was a slim, white needle of a plane with a delta wing that looked almost too sharp for the sky. Built jointly by Britain and France, it carried passengers from 1976 to 2003 at twice the speed of sound. A flight from London to New York took about 3 hours 20 minutes - fast enough that you arrived earlier than you left, thanks to time zones.
To make supersonic flight possible, the engineers had to invent solutions to weird problems. The plane stretched several inches in midair from the heat of cutting through the atmosphere at Mach 2. The pointed nose was great for slicing air but blocked the pilots’ view, so it actually drooped down on hinges during takeoff and landing.
Only 20 Concordes were ever built, and tickets cost thousands of dollars. After a deadly crash in 2000 and rising fuel costs, the planes were retired in 2003. No commercial supersonic passenger jet has flown since - but several companies are now racing to bring the idea back.
