Pioneer Concorde Test Pilot Andre Turcat Dies
Turcat became chief test pilot for the Concorde program’s French effort and was the first to take the supersonic aircraft beyond Mach 1.

Concorde flew its last commercial service 12 years ago, but the pilot who first took the Anglo-French SST into the sky survived up until this week. Andre Turcat, who commanded the four-man crew that made Concorde’s 27-minute first flight from Toulouse-Blagnac on March 2, 1969, died at his home in Aix-en-Provence on Monday at the age of 94. He had joined the Free French air force in World War II and later, during the Indochina War, flew C-47s with enough panache to earn a place at France’s EPNER test-pilot school at Istres.