Concorde's First Flight: Supersonic Travel (1969) | British Pathé

toulouse concour double a1 made her most important public appearance back end first she was being nosed out of her hangar by a tractor on the day for which britain and france and the rest of the world had waited so long the great giant supersonic jetliner was going to fly a year late millions of pounds over the estimated cost and still a very big question mark these were concorde's first claims to fame but on this day a lot of those question marks would be answered for concord 01 this was the ch

ance to prove she was the super bird everyone had hoped and worked for 193 feet long 38 feet tall with a wingspan of 84 feet vital statistics of an anglo-french lady who was all dressed up and ready to go places on the biggest date of her life keeping that date where the world's pressed all eyes were glued to the sleek futuristic machine standing on its spindly legs out there its droop snoot in the down position surveying the sea at the other end heat surged from the mighty rolls-royce engines a

s the ground crew checked rechecked and checked against concorde was buttoned up good and tight there was little more anyone could do other than flyers after six years of designing and building delays and progress the dream was a reality concorde nose slowly out towards the starting point of her flying career the men chosen to crew the speed bird on her maiden flight had plenty to do during the last few seconds before takeoff the all-important final pre-flight check carried out by chief pilot an

dre touka and his crew went without a hitch this was it so with twelve tons of test equipment on board andre trucker took concord up to ten thousand feet she was almost ticking over at less than three hundred miles an hour no still in the through position undercarriage down less for the pilot to do the better earthbound technicians waited for reports to come in and what reports they wear concord handled beautifully after only 27 minutes of flight she was coming home the weather was threatening b

ut the test pilot knew what he wanted to know concorde was coming back as a success in a few years time the site of concords on international airfields all over the world will be commonplace if all goes well then there'll be 130 passengers on board flying times will have been cut by half london to new york from 7 hours 40 minutes to 3 hours 25 minutes but for the moment there's a lot more flight testing to be done a long lonely job for the french and british test pilots and their crews but now w

as a time of triumph and andre tulka was the hero jubilant senior executives of su daviasio and the british aircraft corporation greeted the tall quiet frenchman who had taken their machine on its successful maiden flight inside the world's press wanted to hear mr torkas verdict the big bird flies he said it's the beginning of the big work if that work goes well britain and france stand to make four thousand million pounds and lead the world of civil aviation