‘It’s just black sky up there’: 50 years on, the transatlantic flight speed record remains unbroken

Noel Widdifield, far right, and Jim Sullivan with their wives after the airmen made their record-breaking flight in 1974. Photograph: Central Press/Getty Images

On 1 September 1974 two men made the fastest ever journey between New York and London. The astonishing trip – at three times the speed of sound – took less than two hours and set a record that still stands 50 years later.

Even the mighty Concorde, which set the record for the fastest commercial transatlantic flight in 1996, straggled in almost an hour behind.