Air France Flight 4590

This amazing plane, called the Concorde, was getting ready for a super-long trip from Paris, France, all the way to New York City! Paris is a famous city with tall buildings and lots of history. The airport where the plane started its journey is called Charles de Gaulle Airport. It's a very busy place with planes coming and going all the time, like a giant playground for airplanes!

On July 25, 2000, something very sad happened. As the Concorde zoomed down the runway, it accidentally rolled over some pieces of rubber that had fallen off another plane. This made one of its tires pop!

Imagine a balloon bursting, but much, much bigger and faster. The pieces of the tire flew up and hit the bottom of the airplane, causing a fire. Even though the pilots tried their best, the plane couldn't fly safely anymore and sadly crashed.

The Concorde was a super special airplane because it could fly faster than the speed of sound! That means it could travel faster than a race car or even a jet fighter. It was so fast that it could cross the Atlantic Ocean in just over three hours. This was the only time a Concorde plane had a really bad accident in all the years it flew, which was 27 years!

After this sad event, all the Concorde planes were told to stop flying for a while. Scientists and engineers worked really hard to make them even safer. They made some changes to the planes.

Then, the Concorde planes started flying again. But sadly, they weren't as popular anymore, and eventually, they stopped flying altogether in 2003. It was the end of an era for these incredible supersonic jets.