Farewell our supersonic friend

Today marks the sad close of (for the forseeable future) supersonic passenger air travel. Concorde posted it's final commercial fare paying flight, from Heathrow, London to JFK, New York. Unfortunately I have never had the chance to fly on it :( when news broke earlier this year it would be retiring, I tried to book a frequent flyer seat - unsurprisingly they had all gone.

Amazing Concorde facts (courtesy of ba.com and other sources):

• She stretches up to 10 inches in flight
• The wingspan is less than that of slower passenger jet's due to the use of vortex lift
• Her four Rolls Royce engines make more than 38,000 lbs of thrust EACH (with after burner)
• She is travelling at 250 MILES PER HOUR groundspeed before she even leaves the ground! That's over 400 kilometers per hour!!! Sure would give my Honda S2000 a run for it's money down the straight ;)
• Travel time from London to New York is less than half that for a conventional passenger jet - combined with the time difference you land in New York before you left London.
• Concorde has clocked up more supersonic flight hours than all the Air Forces in the world.

You can read all the current news surrounding this flight with this google news search: external link.