LAST week saw a remarkable event. It is very unusual for a technological advance to be abandoned because of lack of interest.

The career of Concorde as a commercial passenger aircraft ended on Friday. The number of observers who gathered at Heathrow to watch the final three landings indicated the affection in which this remarkable aircraft is held.

I am old enough to have watched on the television when Concorde made her first trial flight.

Raymond Baxter, who seemed always to report on BBC programmes which had a scientific or technological content was undoubtedly excited. That also applied to those who followed the aircraft through to its first flight.

The fact that the aeroplane was built and designed by the British and French, not by the Americans, added to the sense of achievement.

One wonders whether the attitude of certain American airports to Concorde's landing rights would have been the same had the jetliner been designed in the States.

Until the recent announcement of the aircraft's retirement, it was always an ambition of mine to travel aboard Concorde. A few years ago my aunt died, leaving me a modest sum which I had not been expecting.

I was just coming up to one of those birthdays which have a zero on the end, and so for about ten minutes I thought I may just have a flight to New York. I harboured the notion for ten minutes because it took about that time for me to load the appropriate website and to find out how expensive it really was to fly supersonically across the Atlantic.

Another nice idea bit the dust.

The only person I know who flew on Concorde won the flight - which was around the Bay of Biscay - as a kind of raffle prize. He had not flown before, and I remember thinking that a flight on Concorde was a tremendous way to start.

The trouble with Concorde is the expense of running the plane and the environmental damage it causes as it goes about its business.

The bang caused by any plane travelling at a supersonic speed does not help to endear it to those unfortunate enough to live under its flight path.

The noise of engines getting it to those speeds is tremendous. The amount of fuel needed to propel an aircraft at more than the speed of a bullet, and the standards of maintenance required to do it safely, meant it was never going to be possible to operate Concorde cheaply.

This is the age of cheap flight and this mindset applies also to business travel. Concorde was always for those prepared to pay a lot more for the flight to be relatively brief.

The damage done to the atmosphere by supersonic flight is well documented. Those who campaign for greater care of the world in which we we live will be pleased that these flights have been stopped. The truth is that they were stopped for commercial reasons.

Action was not taken because of the ozone layer. As usual many preach about what everyone else should do.

Everyone else should take action to save the world so we can just go on as normal.

Do as I say, not as I do.

It is difficult to appreciate the fact that the human race has effectively stopped trying to advance in a particular direction.

It is rather like admitting that no one is ever going to run any faster.

This is emphatically not the way we usually behave.

Updated: 12:35 Tuesday, October 28, 2003