Few eyebrows were raised when Agence France-Presse reported last week that an Air France Concorde would break the sound barrier again, 40 years after the airliner first flew.

The April Fool's Day story from the National Air Museum at Le Bourget fooled the news agency because it was plausible. In Britain, it would have raised an instant laugh because the nation's aeronautical heritage is not exactly a priority for the Government nor, as we hear today, for British Airways.

News that BA may shift the last of its Concordes still without a home from Heathrow to Dubai would be unthinkable in France, which sees itself as the cradle of aviation.

The Concorde story may have ended with its withdrawal in 2003, three years after the fatal Paris crash. A trial is yet to determine responsibility for that. But l'Oiseau Blanc, as the French press still call her, lives on as a symbol of Gallic aeronautical pride. Air France's surviving Concordes are all on display, at Charles de Gaulle airport, in Toulouse, in Germany, at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington and at Le Bourget.

BACKGROUND

• Like Concorde but without breaking the sound barrier

• How Concorde idea took off

• Concorde wheeled out to make case for Heathrow

• Concorde's retirement homes

Times Archive, 1969: 'The big bird flies pretty well'

The Anglo-French Concorde supersonic airliner took off on its maiden flight today

• Archive Topic: Concorde

A brace of Concordes hold pride of place at that wonderful museum, property of the Defence Ministry, at the oldest Paris airport. Parked nose-to-nose are Fox Bravo, the first prototype, and Sierra Delta, one of Air France's last. Some of SD's systems are kept in working order. The flightdeck hums into life and the nose is often lowered into the droop that was Concorde's trademark on take-off and landing.

No one questions the need to keep Concorde alive, if not flying. Althought a joint project, it was part of the tradition of French aeronatical trailblazing. The Wright brothers achieved the first powered flight in 1903, but France got into the air long before that - in the 1780s when the Montgolfier brothers floated over Paris in their hot-air balloons. In June we celebrate the centenary of the first cross-Channel flight, by Louis Blériot, a Frenchman, of course.

Any English-speaker who doubts France's pioneering role should think which language coined the words “aeroplane”, “aviation”, “aerodrome”, “fuselage”, “aileron”, “parachute”, “nacelle”, “canard” and so on. British fans of Concorde learnt that canard was the term for the little stablisers near its flight deck.

While BA is thinking of dumping its Concorde in Dubai, France has been celebrating the aircraft's 40th anniversary with affection and pride. A star of the early spring is André Turcat, the test pilot who commanded Concorde's maiden flight from Toulouse in March 1969. Turcat, now aged 87, said that the airliner could have flown for years. “The crash made the end inevitable, but we knew that Concorde would live on.”

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