Nearly 20 years after its final flight, Concorde continues to capture the imagination of many aviation enthusiasts as the most remarkable airplane in history: a brilliant, beautiful marvel of innovation and ingenuity that became the darling of the world's jet-setting elite.
With the tagline "Arrive Before You Leave" for its ability to fly passengers westward across the Atlantic Ocean in about three hours, Concorde still holds the prestige of being the only commercial supersonic aircraft (though that status could soon be disrupted by several emerging players reviving the sector).
Even so, those lucky enough to have traveled on Concorde say the aircraft will always retain a rarified air not just for its engineering feats—flying more than twice the speed of sound and on the fringes of space, at 11 miles above the ground—but also for an unmatchable aura of thrill and luxury.
"The atmosphere in the cabin was one of an exclusive club, and it was because these were the people who controlled the world, controlled the world's finance and the world's trade,"
