On March 2, 1969, a sleek white needle-shaped aircraft lifted off from Toulouse, France, and changed aviation forever. The Concorde, jointly built by British and French engineers, was the world's first supersonic passenger airliner: it could carry 92 to 128 people across the Atlantic Ocean at twice the speed of sound, cutting a seven-hour flight down to three and a half hours. Passengers on the flight deck could watch their own shock wave race ahead of them. For the wealthy travelers who could afford the ticket, the Concorde promised something that had seemed impossible just decades earlier: breakfast in London, lunch in New York.

The Concorde's story began with dreams and contracts. Studies started in 1954, and by 1962, Britain and France signed a treaty to build it together, estimating costs at £70 million (which would equal nearly £1.8 billion in 2025 money). Construction of six prototypes began in February 1965. The manufacturers were wildly optimistic, predicting that airlines would eventually buy 350 Concordes, with options for up to 100 more. By the mid-1970s, however, those predictions looked absurdly wrong. Delays and enormous cost overruns bloated the price tag to £1.5 to £2.1 billion by 1976 (equivalent to £12 to £16.7 billion today). Only two airlines in the entire world bought the Concorde: Air France and British Airways, each taking seven aircraft for a total of just 20 built.

The Concorde was an engineering marvel unlike anything else. Its aluminum fuselage was so narrow that four passengers sat side-by-side. The plane featured a distinctive "droop nose" that lowered for takeoff and landing so pilots could see the runway. Four Rolls-Royce and Snecma turbojets with reheat (afterburners) gave it the power to accelerate past the sound barrier. The aircraft could cruise at twice the speed of sound for 75 percent of the transatlantic crossing, which meant it could fly from Paris to New York in just 3 hours 30 minutes. It was also the first airliner ever built with analogue fly-by-wire flight controls, a technology that today is standard on nearly every modern jet. But there was a catch: the sonic boom it created when traveling faster than sound could only be tolerated over the ocean, never over land, which meant transoceanic routes were its only option.

The Concorde entered service on January 21, 1976, when Air France began flying it from Paris-Roissy (now Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport) and British Airways launched service from London Heathrow. Transatlantic flights were everything: Air France added service to Washington Dulles on May 24, 1976, and to New York's JFK airport on October 17, 1977. The Soviet Union briefly had a competitor called the Tupolev Tu-144, which carried passengers starting in November 1977, but a crash in May 1978 ended that program. Boeing had planned a competitor called the 2707, but cancelled it in 1971 before a single prototype was built. For most of its 27 years in operation, the Concorde had no real rival.

Then tragedy struck. On July 25, 2000, Air France Flight 4590 crashed just minutes after taking off from Paris, killing all 109 people aboard plus four on the ground. It was the Concorde's first and only fatal accident in commercial service. The fleet was grounded for safety improvements and returned to service in November 2001, but the flying public's confidence had been shaken. Just two years later, in 2003, both Air France and British Airways retired their remaining Concordes. The final flight landed on November 26, 2003. Of the 20 aircraft built, 18 survived and today sit in museums across Europe and North America, reminding visitors of the age when the rich could cross an ocean faster than the sun could cross the sky.