There was silence as AF002 taxied down the runway at Roissy Charles-de-Gaulle Airport yesterday morning, then applause as the beautiful, clumsy bird took to the air for a three-hour, 54-minute flight.
Celebration has been rare in the gloomy, post-September 11th world. So Air France and British Airways laid on extra champagne, caviar and VIPs for their first commercial Concorde flights in 15 months. On July 25th 2000, 113 people died when a Concorde crashed minutes after take-off from Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle airport.
At New York's Kennedy Airport, three fire engines greeted the first Concorde with fountains of water, and the French pilot, Edgard Chilliaud, waved an American flag from his cockpit window.
The French Transport Minister, Mr Jean-Claude Gayssot, said the flight was "formidable" and "extraordinaire", a source of "emotion, joy and pride" at a time when the airline industry was in crisis.
When the Concorde crashed, Air France chairman Mr Jean-Cyril Spinetta recalled, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani of New York had gone personally to the Air France office in New York to present condolences. "Air France has not forgotten."
A few hours later, a British Airways Concorde also landed at Kennedy, the aircraft's interior newly designed by Terence Conran. Another Concorde brought Tony Blair to Washington.
