The catastrophic accident that killed the Concorde dream

On this day, July 25, 2000 the supersonic passenger aircraft, Concorde crashed on take-off in Paris.

All 109 passengers and crew, and four people on the ground were killed. The plane ran over debris dropped on the runway from an earlier aircraft on take-off.

Concorde was retired in 2003 after 27 years of commercial operations.

The Russians also designed a supersonic passenger plane, the Tupelov Tu - 144. It flew for less than a year and crashed in May 1978.

The Concorde was a British French project. Design planning began in the 1950s.