“The only reason I was able to fly so much was because of Concorde,” my grandpa said, referring to his monthly business trips from Miami to London and back in the 1970s and 1980s. “The most wonderful thing was reducing the number of hours in the air. From London to Singapore, you cut 17 hours down to seven.” International businesspeople especially were inclined to splurge on airfare because of the practical benefit; saving hours, even days, and avoiding jet lag. With twice-daily service from London to New York, it was not uncommon for businesspeople to take day trips and return home before pubs closed.

Stamps in Cyrillic script, Arabic, and Mandarin speckle Grandpa’s extensive collection. He estimates he flew internationally up to twice a month for 15 years, with at least one trip per month on the Concorde. Aisle seat 1B was his spot, so often that flight attendants made a special name card for him. He remembers flights with Sarah Ferguson, the duchess, and Itzhak Perlman, the violinist. And he remembers the gifts. “Oh the gifts! They always had spectacular gifts.” A sterling-silver tie clip, picture frame, or whiskey flask often waited on passengers’ seats. Businesspeople received meeting portfolios with Concorde logos; logos that decorated stationery, luggage tags, and flying certificates. But these objects, in addition to a full set of branded kitchenware, hid in a box at my grandparent’s home. They were a less vivid memory than what he found most compelling about his experience. “It was a time machine that allowed me to cut down on so many hours of travel so I could be a human instead of a zombie,” he said. “It’s true, we did do something so advanced that doesn’t exist anymore.”

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When people talk about the Concorde, they describe it the way one might describe Marilyn Monroe: elegant, glamorous, classic, peppered with oohs and ahhs. That romance echoed through the words of pilots, staff, passengers, and anyone who touched or was touched by Concorde in some way. “You would always stop what you were doing,” said Brian Lovegrove, a former British Airways employee, of Concorde takeoffs and landings. “You could never have enough of seeing it. It was a delight to watch and hear.”

It was, in a word, loud. And the tilting sensation when climbing to 60,000 feet was akin to “being in a dentist’s chair,” Lovegrove said. He described feeling the power of the engine beneath you until the aircraft leveled out. Unless you looked at the Mach meter on the bulkhead, or until the pilot announced you hit Mach 1 then Mach 2, passengers had no idea they were moving twice the speed of sound: about 1,500 miles per hour, compared with 485 miles per hour on a commercial 737. “Just to let you know how the flight is progressing, the answer is quickly,” pilots would say. Champagne flutes and the first course of Sevruga caviar had already been served.