Home / Trivia / Transport & Machines
About how fast did Concorde cruise?
It crossed the Atlantic in under 3.5 hours. It retired in 2003.
Britannica gives Concorde's cruising speed as about 2,179 km/h (roughly 1,354 mph), or Mach 2.04. Mach 1 is the speed of sound relative to the air, which varies with temperature, so the ground speed of a Mach 2 flight depends on altitude. Concorde cruised high, around 60,000 feet according to commonly cited figures, where the air is cold and thin.
The aircraft was an Anglo-French project. It first flew on 2 March 1969, made its first transatlantic crossing in September 1973, and began scheduled supersonic passenger service on 21 January 1976. Only 14 entered airline service, with British Airways and Air France operating them. A flight between London and New York took about three hours, and slightly longer in some conditions.
Noise, high operating costs and limited range kept the fleet small. An Air France Concorde crashed on 25 July 2000 shortly after takeoff from Paris when debris from a burst tyre ruptured a fuel tank; 109 people aboard and 4 on the ground died. Flights resumed after modifications, but the fall in traffic, combined with maintenance costs, led Air France to end service in May 2003 and British Airways in October 2003.