Last Air France Concorde flight to New York leaves Paris
By LAURENT LEMEL
Associated Press Writer
PARIS (AP) -- Flying into blue skies and history, the last Air
France Concorde commercial flight for New York left Paris on
Friday, closing a pioneering chapter in aviation.
The white needle-nosed supersonic plane took off with a roar
from Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport at 10.38 a.m. (4: 38 a.m.
EDT).
On Saturday, in its last ever commercial flight for Air France,
Concorde will fly back to Paris from New York and then go into
retirement.
"It's very emotional. Concorde is a story of joy, of emotion,
of technical prowess," said Jean-Pierre Lefebvre, a Concorde
staffer, before the flight departed with 58 passengers, three
pilots and eight cabin crew.
Air France and British Airways, the only carriers to operate the
aircraft, are both retiring their Concorde fleets. The last British
Airways flights are scheduled for October.
Concorde's demise will end an era of Champagne and caviar at
twice the speed of sound.
The luxury aircraft began regular service in 1976. With a
cruising speed of 1,350 miles per hour, it crosses the Atlantic in
about three hours; because of the time change, westbound passengers
arrive an hour before they left.
The idea of a supersonic passenger plane gained momentum in the
1950s, after Chuck Yeager's 1947 blast through the sound barrier.
Manufacturers in Britain, France, the Soviet Union and the United
States all worked on designs.
In 1968, the Concorde's first prototype rolled out at Toulouse,
France. It lifted off 13 months later, three months after the
Soviet version made its first flight.
But Air France says the aircraft is now too expensive to
maintain and announced with British Airways in April that Concorde
was being retired.

(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)