“It is a magic aircraft… the pleasure of flying in it is almost a carnal one.” So said Joelle Cornet-Templet, a chief stewardess for Air France, about Concorde: one of the world’s first supersonic civilian airplanes, which flew from 1976 to 2003 and became a watchword for travelling in style.

This thoroughbred airliner could fly from London to Sydney in 17 hours, three minutes and 45 seconds; compared to around 22 hours on a Boeing 747.

Concorde was the best-known member of an exclusive club of two; the only other civilian airliner able to break the speed of sound was the Soviet Union’s Tupolev Tu-144, which flew until 1999. A variant of the Tupolev was used in experiments by Nasa, and American and Russian aerospace industries, in a joint research program after the end of the Cold War.

The end of the Concorde and Tupolev airliners left the supersonic market empty. But now, 12 years after the Concorde fleet last flew, even faster airliners are taking shape in research facilities.