There were more spectators than usual on the terraces at Orly airport, south of Paris, on that September afternoon in 1973. They had come to see the making of a piece of aviation history - the climax of the fastestever Transatlantic crossing by a commercial aircraft.
The plane was the Concorde, built jointly by France and Britain in the most imaginative, most challenging, undertaking in aviation history. Yet the crowd was not enormous, nor was there any feeling of great excitement in the air. The technological "miracle" of yesterday had already been accepted, both in France and in Britain, as a simple fact of life today.
In the countries the aeroplane had just been visiting, the picture had been very different. Ten-mile traffic jams had built up around airports as crowds of a hundred thousand and more gathered to look over the creation that was designed to bring faster-than-sound flight within reach of anyone with the price of a plane ticket.
And, suddenly, there it was, a speck in the eastern sky that grew rapidly. As always, the landing configuration - nose drooped, long undercarriage lowered, the typical high-angle approach of the deltawinged aeroplane - gave it the appearance of a great sea-bird.
The crowd had been told to expect Concorde 02, second of the pre-production aircraft, at 1530. It had come in, in fact, a few minutes ahead of time, landing at Orly only 3hr. 33min. after take-off from Dulles airport, Washington - 213 minutes to cover a distance of nearly 3,900 statute miles. Its average speed had been about 1,100 miles an hour, or about 18 miles a minute.
For 2hr. 16min. The aircraft had flown at Mach 2, about 1,350mph, twice the speed of sound, carrying a payload of 25,0001b., made up of test installtions and 32 passengers. In the VIP lounge, newspaper and TV men had gathered to hear about the flight and to interview the crew and passengers who included airline executives, government officials and aviation journalists.
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