French Production Aircraft
Air France also had seven production aircraft in commercial service:
- F-BTSC (203) was lost in the Paris crash on 25 July 2000 killing 113 people. It was featured in the film The Concorde ... Airport '79. It first flew on 31 January 1975 from Toulouse and flew for 11,989 hours.
- F-BVFA (205) First flew on 27 October 1976 from Toulouse. In 1988 it flew around the world in a record breaking (at the time) 41 hours 27 minutes. It made its final flight to the Smithsonian Institution National Air and Space Museum's new Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center at Washington Dulles International Airport (USA) on 12 June 2003 and flying 17,824 hours.
- F-BVFB (207) first flew on 6 March 1976 from Toulouse. It was sold for €1 to the Sinsheim Auto & Technik Museum in Germany. It flew to Karlsruhe-Baden–Baden Airpark, in South West Germany on 24 June 2003. After removal of its wings and tail fin, it travelled by barge and road, to join a Tupolev Tu-144 already on exhibit at Sinsheim. It has flown 14,771 hours.
- F-BVFC (209) first flew on 9 July 1976 from Toulouse. It was retired to the Airbus plant at Toulouse (France), where the French aircraft were constructed, on 27 June 2003, joining 201 and ending Air France's relationship with Concorde. The final flight was supersonic, and included a go around at Toulouse. It had flown 14,332 hours.
- F-BVFD (211) first flew on 10 February 1977 from Toulouse. It was retired early, in 1982, having flown only 5,814 hours (final flight on 27 May 1982). Badly corroded after being stored outdoors, and damaged through use as a source of spare parts, it was broken up in 1994.
- F-BTSD (213) first flew on 26 June 1978 from Toulouse. It was retired to the Air and Space museum at Le Bourget (France) on 14 June 2003, joining 001 after flying 12,974 hours. In 1996, this aircraft carried a promotional paint scheme (blue with logo) for Pepsi. It flew subsonic flights (the plane requires a white livery to fly supersonic, because of the heat) around the Middle East and is estimated to have cost Pepsi $20 Million. (213) also holds the world record for flying around the world in both directions. Westbound in 32 hours 49 minutes and 3 seconds on 12/13 October 1992 and Eastbound in 31 hours 27 minutes and 49 seconds on 15/16 August 1995. It also was the only Concorde to land in Central America and then it set a new time record between Juan Santamaria International Airport and John F. Kennedy International Airport.
- F-BVFF (215) first flew on 26 December 1978 from Toulouse. It remains on display at Charles de Gaulle International Airport in Paris, being cosmetically reassembled, after the withdrawal of the type was announced mid-way through refurbishment. It last flew on a charter flight to Paris Charles de Gaulle on 11 June 2000 after flying 12,421 hours
Read more about this topic: Concorde Aircraft Histories
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—Marilyn French (b. 1929)
“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
—Charles Darwin (1809–1882)