On October 24th 2003, British Airways officially retired its Concorde fleet. Air France had retired its fleet earlier in the year.

Concorde was a supersonic passenger aircraft jointly developed by the French Aérospatiale and the British Aircraft Corporation. Concorde entered service in 1976 and flew for 27 years.

Only 20 planes were ever built, and 6 of these were not passenger aircraft. Only Air France and British Airways operated them regularly. The plane was one of only two supersonic craft to enter commercial service, with the other being the Soviet Tupolev Tu-144.

Following the crash of one of the Concorde planes in 2000, the events of September 11th and the impact they had on air travel, and the decision of Airbus to stop supporting the design, the decision was made to retire the Concorde fleet. The Tu-144 was less safe and less successful.

Image: By Eduard Marmet [CC BY-SA 3.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), CC BY-SA 3.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL 1.2 (www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/fdl-1.2.html)], via Wikimedia Commons (commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:British_Airways_Concorde_G-BOAC_03.jpg)