Concorde To Be Retired
It's a sad day. One more little dream on my list that will never come true. I just read that British Airways and Air France, the only two airlines to operate Concorde, will take the glamorous but hugely expensive jets out of service by the end of October because of falling passenger demand and rising maintenance costs. It seems the remaining jets will end up in museums.
I remember when they were being developed and how cool it was when the first one flew with passengers on board from Paris to Rio de Janeiro in 1976. I knew that someday I would be on one. Of course, my vision at that time also included having late night suppers in Paris.
More realistically, I assumed that someday everyone would fly that way. It seemed that we would all be speeding around the globe, safely and inexpensively. However, with fare for round trip across the Atlantic at $9,300, there really weren't that many people flying. In fact, the day the end of services was announced Air France only had 12 passengers on board. Sad, huh?
So hats off to the French for designing such an elegant, sexy, and mercurial machine. And a moment of silence for it's passing.