Concorde made its first test flight
On this day · 2 March 1969
On this day in 1969, a slender white delta lifted off from Toulouse and opened the brief, glamorous age of supersonic passenger travel.
On March 2, 1969, the Anglo-French prototype Concorde 001, registration F-WTSS, lifted off from Toulouse in southern France with test pilot Andre Turcat at the controls. The maiden hop lasted just 27 minutes, with the famous drooping nose and the landing gear left down the whole time. The goal was modest: prove the radical delta-winged jet could fly safely, nothing more.
Speed came later. The aircraft first went supersonic that October and eventually cruised at Mach 2, around 1,350 mph, ferrying passengers across the Atlantic in under four hours.
The first supersonic airliner prototype made its first flight, taking off from Toulouse.
Only twenty Concordes were ever built, and high costs, sonic-boom restrictions, and a 2000 crash grounded the fleet by 2003. For 27 years, though, it remained the only way ordinary travelers could outrun the sun.
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