Paris

This year will make the 40th year since the Anglo-French commercial aircraft, the Concorde, made its first flight. Aircraft number 001 first lifted off on 2 March 1969 piloted by Andre Turcat from the aerodrome at Toulose, France, which is today the home of assembly plant for the Airbus A380 superjumbo aircraft. Ironically, it is the success of the A380 and the economies of scale that it brings to airline operations that have made sure that there will probably never be another Concorde-type passenger aircraft again.

In the latter 1990s, Boeing and a consortium of American aerospace firms teamed with Russian industry to convert one of the last-built models of the Tupolev Tu-144D aircraft that were Soviet aviation’s answer to the Concorde, and were christened with the nickname “Concordski.”