History of Concorde Aircraft

Twenty Concorde aircraft were built, six for development and 14 for commercial service.

These were:

• 2 prototypes
• 2 pre-production aircraft
• 16 production aircraft
  • The first two of these did not enter commercial service
  • Of the 14 which flew commercially, 9 were still in service in April 2003

The two prototype aircraft were used to expand the flight envelope of the aircraft as quickly as possible and prove that the design calculations for supersonic flight were correct.

• F-WTSS (production designation 001) was the first Concorde to fly, on 2 March 1969, and was retired on arrival at the French air museum at Le Bourget Airport on 19 October 1973, having made 397 flights covering 812 hours, of which 255 hours were at supersonic speeds.

• G-BSST (002) first flew on 9 April 1969 from Filton UK to RAF Fairford UK. Its last flight was on 4 March 1976 when it flew to the Fleet Air Arm Museum at the Royal Naval Air Station Yeovilton, England. It had made 438 flights (836 hours), of which 196 flights were supersonic.

Both pre-production aircraft were used to further develop the design of the aircraft. Changes to design include different wing plan form, more fuel, different engine standard, different air intake systems etc.

• Concorde G-AXDN (101) first flew on 17 December 1971 from Filton and was retired to Duxford, England), where it landed on 20 August 1977, having made 269 flights (632 hours), of which 168 flights were supersonic.

• Concorde F-WTSA (102) first flew on 10 January 1973 from Toulouse. It was the fourth aircraft and the first to have the dimensions and the shape of the future production aircraft. It was the first to fly to the United States (on 20 September 1973 to Dallas, Texas). For several years the aircraft was painted in British Airways colours on one side and Air France colours on the other. It made 314 flights (656 hours), of which 189 supersonic and was then retired to Orly Airport in Paris on 20 May 1976, where it is on display to the public.

The production aircraft were different in many ways to the original aircraft necessitating re-examining certain areas to obtain certification. In all there were six "development" aircraft. The two prototypes (001/002), the two pre-production (101/102) and two production aircraft (201/202)

• F-WTSB (201) first flew on 6 December 1973 from Toulouse. Its last flight was on 19 April 1985 from Chateauroux to Toulouse flying a total of 909 hours. It is currently outside the Airbus factory at Toulouse (France).
• G-BBDG (202) first flew on 13 December 1974 from Filton to RAF Fairford. It last flew on 24 December 1981 after a total of 1282 hours. Subsequently it was stored in a hangar on the Filton Airfield and was used as a spare parts source by BA for their Concorde fleet. It was sectioned & moved by road in May/June 2004 to the Brooklands museum site in Weybridge, Surrey, where after restoration was opened to the public in the summer of 2006^[1]
  • There is an unverified story amongst British Aerospace staff that the last flight of the Filton aircraft was on a contract to the UK Ministry of Defence, to see if a supersonic jet of that size would be radar visible heading over Iceland and down towards the UK from the West; a test of the country's radar defences against the then-new Tupolev Tu-160 'Blackjack' bomber. However, the flight test logs show the final flights of G-BBDG as being test flights being related to Primary Nozzle Control (PNC) development work, which was a planned post entry into service development area.