On January 21, 1976, Air France and British Airways simultaneously launched the world's first supersonic passenger service, using the Concorde. The aircraft could cross the Atlantic in under three and a half hours, a revolutionary speed for the time. The Concorde represented the pinnacle of aviation glamour and technology, though its high operating costs and limited passenger capacity kept it from being profitable for most of its service life.

The Concorde became a powerful symbol of luxury, speed, and the gilded age of air travel, often invoked in poetry and literature to represent a high-tech, elite, and slightly decadent modernism. It inspired a sense of awe and represented the zenith of human technological achievement in flight. Writers often used it as a metaphor for the unattainable, a beautiful machine that defied time and geography.