Concorde's final commercial flights took place on October 24, 2003 — Air France retired its fleet that day, and British Airways followed with three simultaneous arrivals at Heathrow. The decision to retire was driven not by airworthiness but by Airbus's withdrawal of technical support following the July 2000 Air France crash at Paris-Charles de Gaulle, which grounded the entire fleet for over a year and destroyed passenger confidence. Gibraltar's issue came three years after retirement, part of a wave of commemoratives from smaller Crown dependencies capitalizing on enduring public nostalgia for the aircraft.
Concorde's final commercial flights took place on October 24, 2003 — Air France retired its fleet that day, and British Airways followed with three simultaneous arrivals at Heathrow. The decision to retire was driven not by airworthiness but by Airbus's withdrawal of technical support following the July 2000 Air France crash at Paris-Charles de Gaulle, which grounded the entire fleet for over a year and destroyed passenger confidence. Gibraltar's issue came three years after retirement, part of a wave of commemoratives from smaller Crown dependencies capitalizing on enduring public nostalgia for the aircraft.