Concorde Trivia
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49 free Concorde trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Concorde trivia quiz covers the Anglo-French supersonic airliner from the 1954 study committee to the last landing at Filton. The easy questions ask which two countries built it, which two airlines flew it, how fast it cruised, why its nose drooped, what happened in July 2000 and when it retired. Then it moves into the engineering: the ogival delta wing, the four Olympus turbojets, the analogue fly-by-wire, the aluminium alloy that capped its speed, the fuselage that stretched by a foot in cruise, and the carbon brakes. The hard end is for aviation obsessives: the teenager who suggested the name, Tony Benn's defence of the letter 'e', the pilots of the first French and British flights, the number built, the airline that flew it subsonic across Texas, the Singapore Airlines livery, the 2 hour 52 minute New York–London record, the round-the-world charters, the Soviet rival nicknamed Concordski, the DC-10 wear strip that caused the only fatal crash, and the museums where the survivors sit today. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries on Concorde, Air France Flight 4590, the Tupolev Tu-144 and the test pilots before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our aviation history and Boeing 747 quizzes are natural next stops.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which aerobatic team flew alongside Concorde in the 2002 flypast for the Queen's Golden Jubilee?
The Red Arrows
The Red Arrows flanked a British Airways Concorde in the flypast that closed the jubilee weekend, seven months after the airliner returned to service from its long grounding.
Q 02Concorde's maiden flight in March 1969 took off from which French city, now home to Airbus?
Toulouse
Toulouse was where the French-built prototype was assembled, and bad weather forced a postponement before test pilot André Turcat finally took it up on 2 March.
Q 03Which French president flew a Concorde prototype to the Azores in December 1971 to meet Richard Nixon?
Georges Pompidou
Georges Pompidou arrived for the summit on prototype 001, more than four years before Concorde entered airline service, and his successors kept using the jet for state visits.
Q 04Which test pilot flew the first British-built Concorde from Filton to RAF Fairford on 9 April 1969?
Brian Trubshaw
Brian Trubshaw stepped out saying 'It was wizard – a cool, calm and collected operation', five weeks after watching the French prototype's first flight from the press stand.
Q 05How many Concordes were ever built, prototypes and test aircraft included?
20
20 were built and only 14 of them ever flew for an airline; when the prototype first flew, 16 airlines held options on 74, and nearly all of those were later cancelled.
Q 06Which airline boss offered £1 each for British Airways' Concordes when their retirement was announced in 2003?
Richard Branson
Richard Branson said £1 was what British Airways had paid for them and wanted Virgin Atlantic to keep them flying; BA refused, saying its seven Concordes were not for sale.
Q 07With America still closed to it, British Airways' first Concorde service in 1976 flew from London to where?
Bahrain
Bahrain was meant as the first leg of a route the airline hoped to extend to Australia, flown while its main target, the United States, had yet to grant landing rights.
Q 08Why did Concorde wait until it was out over the sea before flying faster than sound?
Its sonic boom disturbed people below
Its sonic boom disturbed people below, so Concorde crossed land at subsonic speed and opened up to Mach 2 only once it was clear of the coast, which kept it largely to ocean routes.
Q 09Who built Concorde's engines with France's Snecma?
Rolls-Royce
Rolls-Royce developed the engines while Snecma built the exhaust system, and the noise they made on take-off helped keep New York closed to the airliner until late 1977.
Q 10Concorde's Olympus engines were based on those used in which RAF bomber?
Avro Vulcan
Avro Vulcan bombers had flown on earlier Olympus engines, and one Vulcan became the flying test bed, carrying a Concorde engine aloft slung beneath its bomb bay.
Q 11Concorde was the first production airliner to be fitted with which of these systems?
Fly-by-wire
Fly-by-wire sends the pilots' commands to the control surfaces as electrical signals; the idea was so new that Concorde kept a mechanical backup, and Airbus later made it standard.
Q 12What shape of wing did Concorde use?
Ogival delta
Ogival delta wings form strong vortices over their upper surface at low speed, which add the extra lift needed for take-off and landing, so Concorde needed none of the flaps and slats other airliners carry.
Q 13Why did Concorde have a nose that drooped for take-off and landing?
So pilots could see the runway
Q 21Concorde's three-and-a-half-hour Atlantic crossing let which singer play both Live Aid concerts, in Britain and America, on one day?
Phil Collins
Phil Collins sang at Wembley, took a helicopter to Heathrow and Concorde to New York, then another helicopter to Philadelphia, where he drummed for the reunited Led Zeppelin the same day.
Q 22The name Concorde comes from a word that, in both French and English, means what?
Agreement and harmony
Agreement and harmony suited an airliner two countries built together; the name went public when President de Gaulle used it in a speech in January 1963.
Q 23Tony Benn said Concorde's final "e" stood for Excellence, England, Europe and what?
Entente
So pilots could see the runway: Concorde took off and landed with its long nose pitched steeply upward, blocking the view ahead, and the nose was raised again in cruise to cut drag.
Q 14What slid up to cover Concorde's windscreen in supersonic flight?
A visor
A visor of heat-resistant glass streamlined the nose in cruise; the two prototypes had a metal one with only two small glass panels, which later aircraft replaced with a fully glazed design.
Q 15Why was Concorde designed for Mach 2 rather than Mach 3?
So the airframe could be built of aluminium
So the airframe could be built of aluminium, a light metal that factories already knew how to work; flown much faster, the heat of air friction would have ruled it out.
Q 16What happened to Concorde's fuselage on every supersonic flight?
It grew several inches longer
It grew several inches longer, because friction with the air heated parts of the skin above the boiling point of water even though the air outside was far below freezing; it shrank back as it cooled.
Q 17In 1996 an Air France Concorde was painted blue to advertise which drinks brand?
Pepsi
Pepsi wanted its new blue look in the sky, but dark paint runs hotter than white, so the wings stayed white and the jet was limited to about 20 minutes at a time at Mach 2.
Q 18How did Concorde compensate for the rearward shift of its centre of lift at supersonic speed?
By pumping fuel between tanks
By pumping fuel between tanks at the front and rear, the crew moved the aircraft's balance point to follow the lift; tilting the control surfaces instead would have added drag.
Q 19Concorde's Dunlop brakes were the first on an airliner made from what material?
Carbon
Carbon brakes weighed far less than steel ones and coped with the heat of stopping an airliner that landed at around 185 mph; they have since become standard on jets.
Q 20Because it flew so high, Concorde's flight deck carried an instrument to monitor what?
Radiation levels
Radiation levels climb with altitude and can jump during a solar flare; if the meter gave a warning, the crew would descend to a lower altitude and carry on at subsonic speed.
Entente, as in the entente cordiale between the two countries: Benn was restoring the French 'e' that an earlier British government had dropped, and announced it at the roll-out without warning anyone.
Q 24Which US airline flew Concordes at subsonic speed on domestic flights out of Dallas/Fort Worth in 1979-80?
Braniff International
Braniff International crews took over the jets for the American leg, with the European registration taped over, but the Dallas flights lost money and were dropped in May 1980.
Q 25Which Asian airline's livery was painted on one side of British Airways Concorde G-BOAD?
Singapore Airlines
Singapore Airlines joined British Airways on a London service in December 1977, but it was suspended after only three return flights when Malaysia objected to the overflights, and resumed in 1979.
Q 26Concorde's only fatal crash, Air France 4590 in July 2000, came shortly after take-off from which airport?
Paris Charles de Gaulle
Paris Charles de Gaulle was two minutes behind the jet when it came down on a hotel in Gonesse: a tyre had burst on the runway, and its fragments ruptured a fuel tank and started a fire.
Q 27The runway debris that burst Flight 4590's tyre fell from which airline's DC-10?
Continental Airlines
Continental Airlines was convicted of involuntary manslaughter by a French court in 2010 over the titanium strip its DC-10 had dropped, but an appeal court quashed the verdict two years later.
Q 28Most passengers on Concorde Flight 4590 were German tourists flying to New York to catch what?
A cruise ship
A cruise ship was waiting for them in New York; the loss of their chartered flight led regulators to withdraw Concorde's certificate, grounding the whole fleet for more than a year.
Q 29Which material was used to line Concorde's fuel tanks as a safety modification after the 2000 crash?
Kevlar
Kevlar-and-rubber liners inside the tanks were designed to stem any leak if debris struck the wing again, and with new burst-resistant tyres they let Concorde return to service in November 2001.
Q 30How did Concorde's last day of passenger service end in 2003?
Three landed minutes apart
Three landed minutes apart at Heathrow, from New York, Edinburgh and a loop over the Bay of Biscay, as thousands watched; British Airways had retired the fleet because it no longer made money.