IT WAS a year of high-flying anniversaries, and more or less fond farewells. On 17 December 1903 the first spluttering aircraft took off at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, and flew for nearly 40 metres. The Wright brothers’ airborne triumph was the beginning of flight as we know it.
A hundred years later, the world’s first supersonic airliner made its last commercial flight. Concorde took its passengers to the “edge of space”, as the PR blurb put it. But the supersonic dream came down to earth in October, somewhat to the relief of people living near airports in London, Paris and New York, who have had to…
