Original subtitles

Three, two, one,

zero.

It's a legendary plane

that flew at twice the speed of sound...

the Concorde.

You could go from France or Britain

to America and back in the same day.

An unprecedented partnership between rival countries.

Concorde was our man-on-the-moon project

here in Europe.

A triumph of technology and invention

that revolutionized air travel...

It's amazing that an airplane that was designed

and brought into production in the '70s

can still outperform pretty much everything,

including most Air Force jets.

The ultimate in luxury for global jet setters...

I think the regular passengers on the Concorde

thought that they were members

of a very expensive and very exclusive club.

And today, the inspiration

for a new generation of supersonic planes.

If I think into the future,

I would really like to be able to imagine

that I could walk out and get on a sleek, new,

quiet supersonic airliner

and get to where I'm going in half the time.

Right now on "NOVA"...

"Flying Supersonic."

15 seconds.

Copy, 15 seconds.

Flying high and fast is everyday business

at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center.

Test pilot Nils Larson

routinely flies faster than the speed of sound.

People always ask when you're a test pilot,

they say, "What's your favorite airplane?"

And the test-pilot answer is, "Whatever I'm flying today."

Fighter planes like these

are on the cutting edge of aviation technology.

They can travel more than twice as fast as a 747.

From here you drive to Vegas,

it's like a three-and-a-half, four-hour drive.

When I go to do a Mach-two run,

it takes about 20, 25 minutes.

And then we turn around, and we're back in about ten.

What if there were passenger planes that could fly this fast?

What if you could go from one continent to another

in half the time it takes now?

Think today of the places in the world

that are hard to access.

Think Singapore,

think Sydney,

that are, like, eight to 16 hours away.

When those flights become much shorter,

you can just decide to pick up and go

and visit Tokyo

or Sydney or Paris for the weekend.

There was a time

when flying faster than sound in a passenger jet was possible.

Three, two, one, zero.

It was the Concorde...

a revolutionary plane

that crossed the Atlantic from Europe to the United States

in under four hours.

In the average commercial jet,

it can take almost twice that long.

Concorde was a triumph of technology.

But what people who traveled on it remember most

is its beauty and speed.

Flying Concorde was like a fantasy for people.

It was partly the luxury, but mostly it was the speed.

You could go from France or Britain

to America and back in the same day.

You could see the curvature of the earth,

because we were 11 miles high.

We would see the sun going down before we took off,

and then as we flew west, it was like it was rising.

Quite an achievement to go faster than the sun was setting.

Humans have long dreamed of being able to fly.

But when Concorde took off for the first time,

aviation itself was only about 70 years old.

One of its legends is Air Force test pilot Chuck Yeager.

In 1947,

he was determined to try to fly faster than the speed of sound.

Like light, sound is a wave that takes time to travel.

Depending on the altitude and air temperature,

Yeager would have to fly about 700 miles an hour

to surpass its speed.

It was daring and dangerous.

Prior to that there was even doubts,

can people even fly faster than the speed of sound?

Because as you start to get closer and closer,

the air compresses in front of the aircraft,

and then it creates some instabilities

and things that, that led people to believe,

"Is this going to be something that's too challenging

that we can even survive?"

Yeager took to the skies

in a test plane shaped like a bullet,

called the Bell X-1.

After World War II,

that was just a great era of trying to really open up

and explore the boundaries of aerospace.

And so we were testing all types of aircraft

to see how you could go higher and faster.

It was an experiment that was flown

in a rocket-powered aircraft dropped from a bomber.

But just a few minutes into Yeager's flight,

there was loud double bang.

My guess is that the local community

probably had heard a few crashes

over the years,

might have suspected that an airplane had crashed.

In fact,

this was the first time a plane created a sonic boom,

as Yeager became the first pilot ever

to pass the speed of sound.

His pioneering feat came to be known

as breaking the sound barrier

and it started decades of research about sonic booms.

When a plane flies faster than the speed of sound,

it compresses the air in front of its nose,

which is then suddenly released again

behind the tail.

This quick compression and release

causes a shockwave.

And when that shockwave reaches the ground,

it creates the noise of a sonic boom.

If you think about a thunderstorm,

when the storm is right on top of you,

and you get that lightning flash

and the immediate crack of thunder

that, you know, causes you to jump out of your chair,

that's a sonic boom.

In the 1950s

only military aircraft could fly faster than sound.

But civilian air travel was a growing industry.

A passenger plane this fast

seemed like it could be a fantastic asset

for airlines that would fly it

and the countries that would produce it.

The governments of Britain and France decided to fund work

on two competing supersonic airliners.

A French firm designed one called the Super-Caravelle.

And a British company planned the Bristol Type 223.

But very quickly,

the technical challenges proved so enormous

that development costs soared.

Officials in Paris and London had to face a hard reality...

there was only one way

to save the dream of civilian supersonic flight.

Neither country could afford to do it by themselves.

They had two very similar designs.

But they didn't have the money or the resources

to do it separately, so they came together.

In 1962 British and French officials

signed an unprecedented agreement

merging their projects into the Concorde...

a supersonic plane that could carry around 100 passengers

at more than 1,300 miles an hour.

The projected date for its first commercial service

was eight years away, in 1970.

It was something that galvanized the industry.

There were a lot of political issues

about making the program happen, bringing it to reality.

But from an engineering point of view,

you know, this, this was a dream.

Engineers spent years developing the plane's new shape...

an elongated fuselage, a pointed nose,

and distinctive wings.

Subsonic and supersonic are very different

from an aerodynamic performance point of view.

The shape of the aeroplane is very, very different.

Getting any plane off the ground involves four forces.

The engines provide its horizontal forward motion,

or thrust.

But when the plane is flying,

the thrust is opposed by air resistance...

this is called drag.

The plane is also pulled down by its weight,

the force of gravity.

So a fourth force helps keep it in the air...

this is lift.

And lift is a direct result of the shape of the wings.

Straight wings offer good stability,

but don't allow optimal flying at supersonic speed.

A triangular shape, like the wings on fighter jets,

reduces drag and is better for fast flying.

But neither wing shape could fly 100 people and tons of fuel

at more than 1,300 miles an hour.

So Concorde needed something new.

The French and British engineers analyzed air flows

and refined the shape over and over again,

until they finally perfected Concorde's unique delta wing.

The techniques were familiar with designers at the time;

they just never applied them to an airliner before,

because no airliner was intended

to fly faster than supersonic speeds.

The Concorde itself has a modified delta.

There's this beautiful curve to it.

A delta wing is probably the best compromise

for high-speed cruising ability for... at supersonics

and low-speed handling.

Supersonic travel was an exciting new possibility

at the 1963 Paris Air Show.

One of the biggest attractions

was the first model of the Concorde.

And its daring new shape was not the only news.

American Juan Trippe,

president of the most powerful airline of the time, Pan Am,

had placed an order for six Concordes.

In Washington, President Kennedy was furious

when he learned about the order...

because he had already decided

that the American aviation industry

was not going to be left behind.

Hello.

Yes, Mr. President.

Did you see what Juan Trippe did?

No, I did not.

He put out an announcement this afternoon

that he is going to buy six planes

from the British and the French.

How could he do that when he knew we were about to go ahead?

Well, now, will you give him this message from me

and make it very clear that I think he ought to retract that?

That he ought to wait now

and see what the United States is going to do,

or otherwise it is going to be very clear

that Pan Am is contributing in a significant way

to the United States being in a secondary position in the air

and also to our balance-of-payment problem.

We'll give him all the trouble he wants,

because there isn't going to be anything

that's going to make me more excited than doing that.

All right... thank you.

Yes, sir.

The very next day,

at graduation ceremonies at the Air Force Academy,

Kennedy threw the United States into the race.

I am announcing today that the United States will commit itself

to an important new program in civilian aviation.

It is my judgment that this government

should immediately commence a new program,

in partnership with private industry,

to develop at the earliest practical date

the prototype of a commercially successful supersonic transport

superior to that being built in any other country of the world.

On the other side of the Iron Curtain,

the Soviet Union was also jumping

into the supersonic plane race.

Two years earlier,

Premier Nikita Khrushchev watched a demonstration

of Russia's first supersonic military bomber,

the TU-22.

Standing behind Khrushchev was the plane's designer,

Andrei Tupolev.

He became one of the leaders of the Soviet effort

to build a supersonic passenger plane,

and the KGB was put into action

gathering information on Concorde.

When we heard the news of the creation

of such a fascinating airplane as Concorde,

Andrei Tupolev was tasked with investigating this subject.

All in all, our goal was to design a similar plane

and perhaps do it even faster, if possible.

It was now a three-way race...

and the engineers on each team

faced unprecedented technological challenges

at a time when computerization was in its infancy.

It is remarkable,

the development and design of this airplane

was long before the advent of high-performance supercomputing.

There were many hundreds, thousands of engineers

working across the supply chain,

trying to optimize and get the right design solutions,

the right aerodynamics.

People joined the industry,

because they wanted to be part of this remarkable project.

Concorde was the first time

that British and French aerospace designers...

former competitors... built a plane together.

And that meant overcoming some very basic differences.

The British measured the plane's weight in pounds.

We measured in kilos.

I remember a session when we said,

"It's a pity, because the take-off mass of 90 tons,

it's not far from 180,000 pounds,"

to which an Englishman replied,

"But in pounds, it's more precise."

The British would build their prototype,

and the French, their prototype.

Everybody talked to each other, exchanged views.

But there still were two assembly lines,

one in France and one in Great Britain.

Each team was responsible

for building specific parts of the plane,

and each had a full-scale prototype

and assembly line.

And without the internet to quickly share information,

the project required not only high-precision craftsmanship,

but high-stakes logistics.

All through its development,

sections of Concorde were shipped back and forth

between Britain and France.

The British would send to Toulouse

a full-scale model

of the end section of their part,

and Toulouse would check whether its section would fit that part.

Conversely,

the French would send their end sections

to the British to check.

You had to interface parts with precision

down to a hundredth of a millimeter.

It was a remarkable bit of technology achievement,

with the brains and the intellect and the enthusiasm

of young engineers at the time.

It just shows what can be done

when people want to achieve something.

But the double production lines came at an enormous cost.

The two governments spent an estimated three billion dollars

developing Concorde...

more than ten times the original estimate,

and the equivalent of almost $20 billion today.

The high development costs

didn't curb the enthusiasm of pilots,

who were eager to learn a new way to fly.

Starting to reduce speed, we're all the way back to 220.

Before Concorde was ready for passengers,

they had intensive training in simulators like this one.

As you can see, this airplane is more complex,

there are far more instruments, far more systems.

It's like four airplanes in one:

it's a high airplane, a low airplane,

a fast airplane and a slow airplane.

So, consequently, we have so many more systems to manage,

and the crew are doing twice as much work in half the time.

There's a lot to learn,

and it takes a pilot who's very experienced,

maybe been with British Airways for 25 years,

six months to learn to fly Concorde

as opposed to just two months

to learn to fly a conventional airplane

like an A380 or a 747.

One of the most important new features to master

was Concorde's unique nose.

In addition to the distinctive shape,

the nose actually moved into different positions.

In the air at supersonic speed, the nose was up,

and a visor reinforced

the plane's streamlined aerodynamics.

But it had to land at a very steep angle,

and this created a problem.

The long nose blocked the pilot's sight line

to the runway.

You're coming into land at quite a high angle of attack,

and sitting in the pilot's seat

with the nose up,

you simply would not be able to see the runway at all.

The ingenious solution was a mechanism

that tipped the nose down

so the pilot had a clear view.

Start turning towards London,

down comes the nose.

100 feet above, just in out,

looking at the runway all the time.

Take the auto-throttles out.

50, 40, 30, 20,

15...

and now start to bring Concorde to a halt

using brakes that are underneath my feet.

And she's such a delight to fly.

The six months that you take to learn

is worth every single moment of it.

Toulouse: the giant hangar at Sud Aviation's headquarters

was the focal point of the world.

For inside was the most exciting new thing

in the world of aviation: Concorde number 001.

In 1967, after five years of intense effort,

the very first Concorde prototype was unveiled

to an eager audience.

Despite the fanfare, it was not yet ready to fly

and the three-way race for a supersonic transport plane,

or SST, was heating up.

There was a technological race

between the West and the former Soviet Union.

There was competition

between Europe and the United States as well.

And Great Britain and France got the leg up on the United States,

and many in the United States wanted to build an SST

just to compete.

The American entry into the race came from Boeing...

a supersonic passenger plane called the 2707.

Like Concorde,

the project was financed by government money.

But the design was even more ambitious...

over a hundred feet longer,

carrying more than twice as many passengers,

and flying about 500 miles an hour faster.

But it would ultimately be the Soviet Union

that became Concorde's biggest competitor.

Today, a museum east of Moscow

features the plane that gave Concorde a run for its money...-

the Tupolev 144.

YURI VALKIN MARKOVICH:

Here is a legendary flying machine.

The name of that legend is Tupolev 144.

It's the first supersonic airliner in the world.

The first flight of a supersonic airliner in the world

took place in the U.S.S.R.

We were the ones to win the first stage

of the supersonic race.

In the throes of the Cold War,

the TU-144 was not only

a technological challenge for the Soviets,

but a political one as well.

The Kremlin issued a mandate:

"Get the TU-144 off the ground

by the end of 1968... before Concorde."

At the last possible moment to reach that goal,

the TU-144 took off on December 31, 1968.

37 minutes later, it landed at an airfield near Moscow,

and its pilots were given a hero's welcome.

The plane had not broken the sound barrier.

But in the three-way supersonic flight race,

the Soviets could claim the first victory.

It's an enormous success for our country,

comparable in scope to launching a space rocket

or to Yuri Gagarin's space flight.

When Western journalists saw the first photos of the TU-144,

they were stuck by its remarkable resemblance

to Concorde.

The similarities were so obvious

that the Russian plane was instantly nicknamed

"Concordski."

I have no doubt

that there was industrial espionage

on the part of the Russians;

and probably there was industrial espionage

on the part of the French and the British as well.

Let's just say

that the intelligence services had specific goals

that made development somewhat easier.

The West and our country met with similar technical problems.

So we did try to obtain

some information on the Concorde.

That is to say, when certain issues arose,

they were passed on to the intelligence services.

Then these services completed the tasks.

The KGB had a dedicated network of spies around Concorde.

Russian agents even managed to smuggle microfilm

containing blueprints and other documents

out of France in toothpaste tubes.

French security forces eventually caught up

with the Kremlin's spies,

some of whom were tried and expelled from France.

If I remember well,

some of our diplomats were thrown out of France

at the time.

It's just work, not espionage.

Like any other work!

Whatever the Russians wanted to call their efforts,

it soon became clear

that the TU-144 was not just a simple copy of Concorde.

Its wings were a modification of the delta shape.

It had different landing gear,

and its fuselage was longer and wider.

It had the same number of engines... four...

and a tipping nose.

But there was one distinctive feature:

whisker-like front winglets.

The Concordski had these little winglets

that came out for take-off and landing.

Those winglets modified the air flow over the wing

in such a way that you could come in

at a lower angle of attack,

which meant less engine power required

and therefore less noise.

So it was a very, very good feature,

that of the Concordski design,

and I think as I say,

if there'd been a second- generation Concorde built,

they would have incorporated winglets into it.

Ten months after the Concordski's debut,

Concorde was ready for the ultimate challenge...

flying supersonic for the first time.

In the cockpit was André Turcat,

the first European to break the sound barrier,

and test pilot Jean Pinet.

Neither of them knew

how a plane this big would react at supersonic speed.

The hour-long flight was about the gradual increase of speed

from Mach 0.9 to Mach 1.05.

So at each step,

I would test whether everything was working well,

and it was going so well

that at one point I asked Turcat,

"Okay, can we keep going?"

And he said, "Certainly not!

"The flight plan ordered Mach 1.05,

we stop right there."

When we landed,

I was surprised to see so many journalists,

and the mechanics who hung a sign on the nose of the plane:

"They made it!"

Concorde was our man-on-the-moon project

here in Europe.

Getting Concorde, that first flight,

that was our space race.

We did it.

We built Concorde, we flew it successfully,

and it's an icon.

In the U.S.

President Nixon was in the White House.

In 1971,

with the cost of the Vietnam War escalating,

Congress decided the Boeing SST was too expensive

and canceled it.

The country wasn't completely behind the idea

of building an SST,

certainly not with taxpayer dollars.

So the aircraft was defeated in Congress.

By a very narrow vote, but it was defeated.

And so the U.S. SST program failed.

In an ironic twist,

at the end of that same year, at a meeting in the Azores,

Nixon met French President Georges Pompidou,

who flew in on the first Concorde prototype.

When I arrived at the airport,

on the Spirit of '76, a Boeing 707,

I saw parked in front of me a Concorde,

which had carried the president of France.

And our ambassador to France, Mr. Watson,

pointed out that he had come from France

at a speed three times as fast

as we had come from the United States.

At the end of the conference,

each president was walking back to his own plane,

and then I suddenly see Nixon stop,

so his delegation stops too.

He turns around and comes toward the Concorde.

President Nixon walks up the stepladder

and greets us.

We explained the Concorde to him.

He stayed in the cabin for a few minutes,

and then he said,

"Well, in the end, it's you who were right,"

and he left.

Even though Concorde

was not yet certified for commercial flight,

Queen Elizabeth and President Pompidou

were already posing onboard to promote the new plane.

But there were significant concerns

about its profitability.

Fuel prices were rising sharply,

and the potential for Concorde to ever make money

was questionable.

Still, by 1972

the excitement about supersonic passenger travel

led 16 airlines around the world

to place sales options on Concorde.

In the airline business, when there's a new airplane,

especially one that promises, you know, great new performance,

many airlines are interested to get onboard

and they place options on the aircraft.

Not orders, they're options.

And quite a few aircraft placed options, including Pan Am.

But when Pan Am and every other airline

actually looked at the numbers after the test flights,

and they realized this aircraft could not make money,

they canceled their options.

In the end, the only sales were

to the French and British government-owned airlines.

They bought 14 Concordes in all...

seven for Air France

and seven for B.O.A.C., which later became British Air.

The 1973 Paris Air Show

was the first time the Russian TU-144 and the Concorde

were presented together

for fly-by demonstrations at subsonic speed.

Concorde went first,

taking off and landing smoothly.

Then the Soviet plane roared down the runway.

A few minutes later,

to the shock of everyone watching,

it broke up in flight and crashed.

Everyone onboard

and eight people on the ground were killed.

We clearly saw pieces come off the plane before it crashed,

hitting the ground in two different places.

It's a big setback for the Soviets.

Yes, and for us.

We share...

Do you think that it

will compromise their supersonic program?

I don't think so.

I think they have more guts than that.

Just as we would if such a situation occurred.

The cause of the crash was never officially determined.

The TU-144 was put into service in 1977,

but it was plagued by mechanical problems

and another crash.

It stopped flying passengers after only 55 flights

and was retired for good a few years later.

But in Paris and London, the long wait was over at last.

After more than 13 years of joint effort,

the dream plane was finally taking off.

On January 21, 1976,

for the first time,

passengers arrived at their boarding gates

with tickets stamped "Concorde."

Just before noon,

a British Airways Concorde left the gate at Heathrow Airport.

Its destination: Bahrain.

At the very same second,

an Air France Concorde to Rio de Janeiro

rolled down the runway in Paris.

The double takeoff was broadcast live.

199 people

were the first commercial passengers in the world

to fly over 1,300 miles an hour.

They did something that nobody else in history has ever done.

You had this aeroplane that operated like a fighter plane

but carried people in comfort.

You weren't wearing an oxygen mask.

You were sipping champagne and enjoying fine food.

Passengers loved that party feeling,

when you toasted with champagne glasses on a magic plane,

and ideally it was when

the Machmeter indicated the breaking of the sound barrier,

and then at Mach 2.2.

Those were the moments

when passengers liked to be photographed

in front of the Machmeter.

While passengers were enjoying the ride,

many amazing innovations were at work in flying Concorde.

When it went from subsonic to supersonic speed,

the shockwave pushed its center of lift backwards,

increasing drag.

In order to keep the cabin horizontal and stable,

engineers came up with an ingenious system.

So what did the designers

come up with as a solution?

They said, "Okay, if the shockwave

"is pushing the center of lift back down the wing,

"why don't we change the position

of the center of gravity as well?"

The only weight that could be moved around in flight

to change Concorde's center of gravity was the fuel...

more than 31,000 gallons in 13 separate tanks.

One of the most technologically significant features

of the Concorde you can't see

was the ability to transfer fuel

from fuel tanks at the front and fuel tanks in the back

as the aircraft transitioned

to supersonic speed and back to subsonic speed.

They had very high-speed pumps

that were able to transfer the fuel fore and aft,

depending on what was required.

And that helped balance the aircraft out

and change the center of gravity.

Supersonic speed also meant that the exterior of the plane,

made of aluminum,

got so hot that it actually stretched during flight.

The Concorde was designed

to expand almost nine inches in flight.

The floor itself sits on rollers,

and the aircraft expands and contracts underneath it,

but you never notice it when you're in flight.

The only thing you notice after about three hours,

it's getting kind of warm in the airplane,

and the window, which is no larger than your hand,

is actually hot to the touch.

But while Concorde was a technological success,

concerns continued to grow

about whether it would ever be a financial one.

Its biggest potential market, New York, was off limits.

Because of the sonic boom

and the noise from takeoff and landing,

the Port Authority would not allow it

to fly into the city.

In the United States,

there was a great deal of pushback in New York,

because of environmental reasons,

particularly sound.

The Concorde on takeoff is extremely loud.

I mean, it's got four bomber engines on it

with afterburners.

And when those engines are lit,

it's very, very loud.

It shakes the windows.

You're flying a very loud airplane

over one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world.

So there's going to be a lot of unhappy people on the ground.

Without New York routes,

there was no guarantee that Concorde could survive.

The noise from supersonic flight was a bigger problem

than just landing in New York.

In fact, any supersonic flight over land by civilian planes

was banned in 1973

and is still against U.S. law.

That's because the sonic boom is heard on the ground

under the entire flight path of a supersonic plane.

We call it the carpet,

it's essentially right directly under the flight path

of the airplane,

up to 25 miles on either side,

is exposed to the sonic boom sound.

If you do fly over land supersonic,

there is a lot of people that could be disturbed by the sound.

But there are almost five times as many people

flying on U.S. airlines today as there were in the '70s...

so any breakthrough that could speed up travel

would be a huge advantage.

NASA ground, cover zero seven control.

NASA Ground, copy, 12,000,

and we are ready for you on the ground.

For decades, scientists at NASA

have been trying to answer a key question:

could they design a quieter supersonic plane?

The solution might lie

in changing the shape of the shockwaves

that produce sonic booms in the air.

We call the sonic boom the N-wave,

and that's because if you plot it on paper,

you have a large spike, a gradual decrease in pressure,

and then another large spike.

So you hear the bang-bang.

What we're trying to do is

we're trying to change those spikes

into a more gradual pressure rise.

So instead of an N,

you've got more like an S lying on its side.

And you don't get a bang anymore.

Test pilots like Nils Larson already know

that certain flight maneuvers make a lot less noise.

And he helps the researchers make recordings

with a daring dive.

We start up at about 49,500 feet, roughly.

And then they give us a point based on winds

and where they have the microphones

and that kind of stuff.

And so you point the nose at the ground, 53 degrees.

It feels just like you're going straight down.

It can get pretty exciting pretty quickly.

And that produces a shaped boom.

And it sounds a little bit more like distant rolling thunder

instead of the typical N-wave

that kind of gives you that crack-crack sound.

A passenger plane would never be able to fly like this.

But Peter Coen and David Richwine lead a team

that's designed a model of an experimental plane

they hope will produce this kind of softer boom.

It starts with a nose that's even longer than Concorde's,

to help dissipate the shockwave in front of the plane.

So normally what would happen with a conventional nose

is you'd have a fairly strong shockwave

on the nose of the airplane.

So, by giving it this long, slender shape,

we're replacing that shockwave

with a more gradual compression,

which essentially makes for less noise

up when the whole signature actually reaches the ground.

Another new feature is putting the engine on top of the wings,

instead of underneath them.

This will send part of the shockwave

at the back of the plane up, into the atmosphere,

instead of down to the ground.

So you're not going to hear that startling boom.

You're going to hear more like a, a thump

that you might hear, like, in an apartment next door

if someone was closing their door

or something like that.

The recordings from Larson's test flights

and computer models of the sound a new design might make

are used to test how people on the ground react.

We bring in people from the general public.

They basically rated their annoyance on a scale

of "Not at all annoying" to "Extremely annoying."

And then in yet other studies,

we added a vibration component,

so they were sitting

on chairs that were shaking.

And so you don't necessarily hear that,

but you feel the vibration,

and so that changed the overall experience.

When they find sound levels

that people think are acceptable,

they'll try to replicate them

with a full-scale, operational plane

based on the model.

It will fly over communities across the country

to see how the sound plays out in different altitudes,

different seasons, and different weather.

No one is sure of the outcome,

but the data will be presented to the F.A.A.

If regulations about supersonic flight over land change,

that could open up the market

for a new generation of passenger planes

almost as fast as Concorde, but much quieter.

So really we would like to take the boom out of the boom.

If I think into the future,

I would really like to be able to imagine

that I could get on a sleek, new, quiet supersonic airliner

and get to where I'm going in half the time.

Ultimately, it was a court decision

that allowed Concorde to land in New York.

But the pilots changed their approach,

slowing down to subsonic speed

while they were still over the Atlantic,

so that people on the ground would not hear the sonic boom

on landing.

So British and French engineers and pilots

had to come up with incredibly complicated flight maneuvers,

ingenious maneuvers,

to prevent Concorde from making too much noise

over residential areas.

As a result, New York takeoffs and landings

were no picnic for the pilot.

It was tough.

Despite the tricky landing procedures,

in November 1977, two Concordes...

one French and one British...

finally arrived in New York.

And the opening of the first supersonic routes

between Europe and New York

kicked off what came to be called "Concorde-mania."

All the fashion models took the Concorde,

show business people, actors,

and politicians, of course.

When there were U.N. general assemblies in New York,

in the front cabin, you'd have five or six prime ministers,

two presidents.

It was the world's rich and powerful

who traveled on Concorde.

Flying on Concorde was also the ultimate assignment

for the cabin crews.

It was such a privilege,

because you were flying the flagship of the airline.

And, you know, we were so nervous,

even though we had

years of experience flying.

It was, it was a whole different game.

Michael Jackson was a frequent Concorde flyer,

and his little indulgence was to get a Big Mac.

Not a big deal, but not so easy to make on a plane.

So we'd get the Big Mac at the airport

and reheat it onboard to please him.

But the speed and glamor came with a very high price tag.

In 1978 a round-trip ticket from New York to London or Paris

cost about $1,500,

which would be almost $6,000 today.

Over its time in service,

the round-trip price went up

to the equivalent of more than $14,000.

As oil prices skyrocketed through the '70s and early '80s,

Concorde's huge fuel consumption also became a problem.

It burned at least twice as much fuel per passenger as a 747,

and that meant that longer

transcontinental flights were impossible.

And pollution from the plane's high-altitude exhaust emissions

was becoming a serious environmental concern.

So even as it kept flying,

there was more and more doubt about a supersonic future.

It was just not affordable.

And you have to understand, it's an airliner.

It's a tool for airlines to make money.

This is a case of the economics trumping everything else.

If it doesn't pay its way, it won't survive.

On the afternoon of July 25, 2000,

an Air France Concorde to New York

left the gate in Paris.

Onboard were 100 passengers and nine crew.

Just as it was taking off,

an air traffic controller told the pilot

he saw flames at the rear of the aircraft.

My mobile phone rang.

And I picked it up, answered it, I said "Hello?"

And the voice said, "Is that Captain Hutchinson?"

I said, "Yes, it is."

And they said, "It's the BBC here.

We want to interview you about the Concorde crash."

A cascade of events had gone wrong.

The plane was overweight.

There was a sudden change in wind direction

but no change in runway.

And then a small piece of metal

on the tarmac caused a tire to explode.

The debris hit a gas tank.

Fuel escaped, instantly caught fire,

and caused a catastrophic loss of two of the engines.

The death toll was 113,

including four people on the ground.

I was at home, and somebody phoned me up.

And I put on the TV.

And it was the same impact as, almost as the Twin Towers,

where you couldn't believe your eyes.

Everybody thought I was onboard.

But I was home, and it was very distressing.

The irony for the Concorde is,

until that loss,

it was statistically the safest airplane in the sky.

After the loss,

it was statistically one of the least safe.

That's only because it flew so seldomly.

After the crash,

all Concordes were temporarily grounded.

But even when flights resumed,

the supersonic plane's days were numbered.

Concorde would only be in service

for two more years.

The dream of flying faster than sound

still makes headlines today.

Boeing is working on a plane the company hopes

will fly almost three times as fast as Concorde.

And Airbus has a concept for a plane

that could go from New York to London in an hour.

This research will likely take decades

before it's known if flying that fast...

at hypersonic speed... is really possible.

But start-up companies like Boom Technology in Denver

are already working on new planes

that build on the legacy of Concorde...

despite the continued existence

of regulations against supersonic flight over land.

It's not just New York to London;

it's San Francisco to Tokyo, L.A. to Sydney.

There are about 500 routes on the planet

that have enough traffic

for a supersonic flight to exist with our airplane

without flying supersonic over land.

Using computer simulations,

newer composite materials,

and different engine technology,

today's pioneers want to build supersonic jets

that will be more environmentally friendly

and more affordable.

The way we've approached it at Boom

is to say, "Hey, let's start with Concorde.

"There's a design that we know worked.

"And what we have to do is improve upon it.

"Let's do something

"that's going to make economic sense for airlines,

that's going to make economic sense for passengers."

And, as a result, this is going to be sustainable.

This isn't going to be, you know,

a couple routes on the planet for some very wealthy people.

Ultimately, this is something that's going to go mainstream

and change the way all of us get around the planet.

The very last flights of Concorde were in 2003.

Watching millions of people around the airport

waving and cheering...

it was a very emotional moment,

and something I shall remember for the rest of my life.

This was the time when I realized

that I had participated in something exceptional.

The remarkable breakthroughs of Concorde

will always be a milestone in aviation history.

And if a quieter,

more cost-effective version of the legendary plane

can be built,

another new chapter will begin.

The U.S. was the first country to break the sound barrier

with Chuck Yeager in the '40s.

I like to think what we're doing

is going to break the sound barrier for the rest of us,

so that's pretty cool.

Even now,

on all the flights I worked,

there is someone on the crew who tells me,

"My regret is that I never flew on the Concorde."