Concorde began scheduled supersonic service between London and New York
On this day · 22 November 1977
On 22 November 1977, Concorde started regular London–New York flights, halving the Atlantic crossing to under four hours.
On 22 November 1977, British Airways Concorde began flying scheduled service between London Heathrow and John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, with Air France opening its own Paris–New York route the same day. The needle-nosed jet cruised at roughly Mach 2, around twice the speed of sound, trimming the transatlantic hop to well under four hours — about half the time of a conventional airliner.
Getting there took a fight on the ground, not just in the air. New York had blocked Concorde over noise, and the route only opened after the U.S. Supreme Court declined in October 1977 to overturn a ruling against the ban.
For the next quarter-century, Concorde made the Atlantic a morning’s errand.
Both airlines kept the New York service running continuously until retiring Concorde in 2003. Tickets were famously steep, but for those aboard, breakfast in London and a workday in Manhattan became a routine kind of magic.
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