Andre Turcat, Concorde's chief test pilot who was the first to break the sound barrier in the supersonic jet, has died aged 94, his family said today.
Turcat was the first person to ease the 001 prototype off the Toulouse runway on March 2, 1969 and took the jet through the sound barrier on October 1.
He died yesterday at home in Aix-en-Provence in the French Alps, after a glamorous life that saw the rise and fall of the legendary Concorde aircraft.
He remained a staunch defender of the jet even after an Air France Concorde bound for New York crashed on July 25, 2000 while taking off from Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport, killing 113 people and sounding the death knell for commercial supersonic travel.
Born in 1921 in the southern French city of Marseille to a family of car manufacturers, Turcat was briefly deployed in 1947 as an air force pilot in what was then known as Indochina, where colonial power France was fighting a war.
In 1952 he was named director of the air force's school of test pilots, and soon afterwards became chief test pilot for France's specialised aviation centre.
He was chief test pilot for Concorde from 1964 to 1976.
After turning in his wings, he was Toulouse deputy mayor from 1971 to 1977 and a member of the European parliament from 1980 to 1981.
Married with three children, Turcat published a memoir entitled "Test Pilot".
