1 During the Second World War, fighter found that their planes became difficult to control when they reached speeds of around 870 kilometres an hour. They were getting close to the speed of sound known as the sound barrier. Many experts believe that aircraft could ever go that fast and survive. But it didn't take long for someone to prove that those experts were wrong. These days many aircraft can fly faster than the speed of sound. Most of them are military aircraft but there was one-the
Concorde-that carried passengers.
2 The Concorde was a technological. When Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic Ocean for first time in 1927 in took him more than thirty hours. A Concorde could make the same journey in under four hours. But it wasn't cheap. In 2002 a seat on a Concorde flight from New York to London cost over US$6,300. But for that you got to travel at twice the speed of sound 18,288 metres above the ground. Only astronauts fly higher.
3 After the crash of an Air France Concorde in 2000 many people thought the Concorde wasn't safe any more and often the flights were half empty. Both British Airways and Air France were losing money and decided to stop using the Concorde. The last flight was made in 2003 but it still remains the fastest passenger aircraft ever built.