Fastest Commercial Aircraft in History
Source:
Wikipedia
Key Findings
🏆
Concorde (UK / France) leads in Max Cruising Speed (km/h) with 2,179 in 2015.
📅
1976 recorded the highest combined total across all categories.
↔️
Gap in 2015: Concorde (UK / France) is 2.5× larger than Douglas DC-8 (USA).
About This Dataset
Fastest Commercial Aircraft in History
Commercial passenger aircraft ranked by maximum cruising speed in km/h. The Concorde and the Soviet Tupolev Tu-144 stand alone as the only supersonic commercial passenger aircraft ever to enter service — both cruising at over twice the speed of sound. The Concorde operated transatlantic routes from 1976 to 2003, crossing from London to New York in as little as 2 hours 52 minutes.
Analysis
Concorde (UK / France) heads the table on 2,179, ahead of Tupolev Tu-144 (USSR) (2,120) and Boeing 747 (USA) (988) in Max Cruising Speed (km/h) in 2015. 1,292 separates the highest figure (2,179) from the lowest (887). First and second are separated by 59, so the leader sits inside the field rather than apart from it. Places 3 to 8 are close together, spanning 988 to 887.
Data Insights
Numbers, trends & sources behind this chart
Methodology & source
- Data source
- Wikipedia
- Coverage
- 8 entities · 1958–2015 (8 years) · 8 observations
- Measure
- Max Cruising Speed (km/h)
- Last updated
- 6 September 2026
- Compiled by
- The ANYSTAT team, from the source above
How the figures are calculated
- Values use the measure and unit named on this page. Consult the dataset description and cited source for coverage, definitions and any unit conversions. Displayed values may be rounded for readability.
- Missing years are left empty rather than estimated — no interpolation, no carrying a previous year forward.
- Change is measured between the first and last year in which an entity actually reported a value, so a series that starts late is not penalised for the years before it existed.
- The compound annual rate is (last ÷ first)^(1 ÷ years) − 1, using those same two reported years.
- Entities are ranked highest-first on their value in 2015.
- An entity that reported nothing in the latest year is still listed — it follows the ranked entities in the table rather than being dropped.
Data Sources & References
All external sources cited in this dataset
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