NEW YORK, May 31: The Air France Concorde ended its supersonic commercial flights on Saturday, arriving in Paris from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and landing a coveted spot in aviation history.

Some 15,000 fans of the supersonic jet were on hand to greet flight AF001 and its 79 passengers at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport, Air France officials said.

The French Concorde, which has flown 27 years under the Air France banner, left New York a little behind its scheduled departure time of 8am (1200 GMT).

At the New York airport, the first passengers had checked their baggage by six in the morning in the nearly deserted terminal hall. Network news vans were parked outside, waiting to bear witness to the end of an era of trans-Atlantic luxury travel.

“Today is our last day with Concorde,” said Cypriam Ugwuh, a security guard finishing his night shift.

“It’s a beautiful aircraft,” he added. “The plane is not wonderful looking at, but when it is landing and taking off, it becomes a different thing.”

“My wife told me this morning, ‘The Concorde is stopping, your mistress is leaving you,’” joked Jacques Malot, Air France’s representative at Kennedy airport.

Shortly after six, the flight crew entered the terminal here, their progress watched with emotion by other Air France personnel and airport security agents.

Later, in the white-and-wood first-class waiting room, passengers sampled offerings from a buffet including croissants and fresh fruit.

Suspended above their heads, bathed in the morning light streaming in through large windows, was an enlarged photo taken from the Concorde’s cockpit during a solar eclipse in August 1999.

Christophe Mazel, financial director of Michelin in Thailand, said he was “doubly moved” to be on the French Concorde’s final flight due to the determinant role his firm played in the resumption of flights in 2001, after a fatal crash the year before — the first ever in Concorde’s history.

“It’s very hard,” he said, “almost to the point of tears.”

The Concorde enthusiast said he had flown on the jet six times but had not really gotten accustomed to the supersonic experience.—AFP