Growing up in the 1970s, it was apparent that the world was getting smaller: not so much by cumulative erosion by billions of residents shuffling along in their daily lives, but rather as air travel was becoming faster and more efficient. While air travel from the Antipodes to the rest of the world was most likely to be restricted to to 747 Jumbos and their variants, travelling at around 1037km/k (mach 0.84) my library books focussing on The Way Things Will Be In the Future reported that the Concorde has just started to fly across the Atlantic at over twice the speed of sound!

The product of a collaboration between Sud Aviation/Aérospatiale and the British Aircraft Corporation, the first prototypes started test flights in 1969. In 1975, it received its airworthiness certificates, with commercial flights taking off in 1976 . The Concorde fleet flew passengers for British Airways and Air France between London/Paris and the United states – particularly Washington and New York. Typically carrying between 92 and 128 passengers. In July 2000, an Air France flight crashed shortly after takeoff killing all on board.The fleet was grounded for a period while safety modifications were rolled out. The Concorde Fleet was retired in 2003, with the final flight in November.

And so…20 years later, the LEGO Group have announced their latest ICONS set – a 2083 piece model of the Concorde. Over 1m long, this scale model will be available in September (4th September VIPs/7th September Everyone Else). It will be priced at $USD199.99/€199.99/£169.99/299.99 AUD/1699.0 CNY/4474.7 TRY/84990.0 HUF/259.99 CAD.