Over a century ago in the December of 1903, the first powered airplane took off. It was made by Wilbur and Orville Wright. Also known as the Wright brothers. The first airplane was named ‘kitty hawk’ by the Wright brothers and it did not look like any modern airplane made by Boeing or Airbus nowadays. It had a top speed of 48 kilometers per hour, a range of 300 meters and a carrying capacity of one passenger. In comparison the Boeing 777X has a top speed of over 1000 kilometers per hour, a range of over 16,000,000 meters and a carrying capacity of 365 passengers. It flies close to the speed of sound, but if it flies normally then it can not break the speed of sound. The first plane to go the speed of sound was the Bell x-1 manufactured by Bell. That was in 1946. The first commercial plane to break the sound barrier was the Concorde, but what the manufacturers did not know was that it was also the last one. Sixteen Concordes were build in total, but only 14 of them actually came in to service for the airlines Air France and British Airways, the manufacturers of the Concorde. At the time of the Concorde it was something really special and it still is. The Concorde yielded British Airways a revenue of 1.75 billion Pounds. The cost were 1 billion Pounds. That’s a 750 million Pounds profit only for British Airways. The profits were massive. Why did the Concorde end? Why were all the flights canceled? The reason is ‘just’ one crash of a Concorde in France. The first commercial supersonic aircraft came to an end because of Air France Flight 4590.
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