PARIS — Flying into blue skies and history, the last Air France Concorde commercial flight for New York left Paris on Friday, closing a pioneering chapter in aviation history.P>

The white needle-nosed supersonic plane took off with a roar from Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport at 10.38 a.m., local time.

"It's very emotional. Concorde is a story of joy, of emotion, of technical prowess," said Jean-Pierre Lefebvre, a Concorde staffer, before the flight departed with 58 passengers, three pilots and eight cabin crew.

Air France and British Airways, the only carriers to operate the aircraft, are both retiring their Concorde fleets. The last British Airways flights are scheduled for October.

Concorde's demise will end an era of Champagne and caviar at twice the speed of sound.

The luxury aircraft began regular service in 1976. With a cruising speed of 2,200 kilometres per hour, it crosses the Atlantic in about three hours; because of the time change, westbound passengers arrive an hour before they left.

The idea of a supersonic passenger plane gained momentum in the 1950s, after Chuck Yeager's 1947 blast through the sound barrier. Manufacturers in Britain, France, the Soviet Union and the United States all worked on designs.

In 1968, the Concorde's first prototype rolled out at Toulouse, France. It lifted off 13 months later, three months after the Soviet version made its first flight.

But Air France says the aircraft is now too expensive to maintain and announced with British Airways in April that Concorde was being retired.