British Airways Receives Concorde

On this day in Aviation, January 15, 1976, British Airways took delivery of it's first Aerospatiale/BAC Concorde (G-BOAA). Scheduled flights began the following week on January 21st via two routes, London-Bahrain and Paris-Rio de Janeiro via Dakar. To alert ATC to the aircraft's abilities and restrictions all British Airways flights used the call sign "Speedbird Concorde" while the French continued to use their normal route numbers.

Due to protests primarily concerning the Concorde's Sonic Boom, the United States had banned landings of the Concorde preventing the aircraft from flying a North Atlantic route. William Coleman, the then U.S. Secretary of Transportation, finally gave permission for the Concorde to land in the United States and on May 24th both British Airways and Air France began service to Washington Dulles International Airport (KIAD). On October 24, 2003, after only 27 years of service British Airways withdrew Concorde from operational service.

Will Concorde every come back? Despite British Airways telling the BBC that it will not fly again, a start-up named Boom Technology has bet that customers do in fact want to fly supersonic and is looking to create an aircraft that flies faster than it's predecessor.  In addition to Boom Technology, NASA's "Son of Concorde" and Airbus' AS2 aircraft are on record and set to take on the perceived gap in supersonic passenger travel.

Only time will tell whether or not another supersonic aircraft with the capabilities matching or exceeding Concorde will actually take to the skies, however in celebration of this amazing aircraft that once upon a time carried passengers from New York to Paris in just over three hours, please see the video below.

"If the power to do hard work is not a skill, it's the best possible substitute for it." - President James Garfield