Up There at 1,300 m.p.h.

At first, the Soviets grabbed the headlines with a dazzling array of new aircraft, especially the TU-144 supersonic jetliner. But when the Paris Air Show got into full swing last week, the French crowds were flocking to see a competing SST, the Anglo-French Concorde. If the Western European jet makes its commercial debut in 1974 or 1975, it will be the first supersonic liner in regular service. TIME'S Paris bureau chief, William Rademaekers, went to Le Bourget Airport to look at the Concorde, and was invited to become one of the first journalists to ride in it. His test-flight report:

THE Concorde engines whined to life in familiar high-pitched fashion, and the plane rolled slowly toward the end of the runway. I was twelve minutes away from personally breaking the sound barrier. Unlike the Boeing 707 and 747, which lumber into slowly gathering momentum, the Concorde has a sprinter's start. I was pushed gently but firmly into my backrest. From the rear of the plane I could see the nose leave the ground, tilting upward and upward until the fuselage looked like a tipping tunnel of love. From the inside, the noise was no louder than that of a normal jet. We were off the ground in seconds and climbing at a sharp angle.

Within twelve minutes we were over the outskirts of Le Havre. It was 9 a.m. when we broke the sound barrier--Mach 1. Up there it comes with a whimper, not a bang. I had to be told that we had passed Mach 1 cruising at 30,000 feet; we felt only a slight whisper of movement, hardly a shudder, as the plane continued to climb.

At 9:15 a.m. we were at Mach 1.9 and still picking up speed; 9:16 and ten seconds ... 20 ... 25. The pilot raised his thumb in a gesture of triumph. A few seconds later we were flying at twice the speed of sound --which, at our altitude of 50,000 ft., came to nearly 1,300 miles an hour.

At this height, I leaned over and looked at a sky I had never seen, and may never see again. Cobalt blue at the edge of my sight, deepening and darkening as my eyes slid upward. No clouds here, no mist or haze. Cruising at Mach 2, ten miles above the earth, the plane probably has less vibration than a normal jet and the same interior noise level. The Concorde is narrow and somewhat claustrophobic, which may make it uncomfortable for some. But for me that feeling paled before the mind-boggling way in which it shrank the world.

Forty-two minutes and 630 miles out of Paris, the Concorde tilted in a graceful left turn toward home. If we had continued on course directly west, we would have been in New York in less than two hours.

The pilot dropped back into subsonic flight. Again, no jolts or jars. The Concorde came home as smoothly as it went out, with its crazy tilt on touchdown; the rear wheels banged onto the runway, and the nose followed seconds later. We had been in the air for one hour and 39 minutes; we had covered 1,425 miles.

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The experience of flying at literally twice the speed of sound was more dramatic in what did not happen than in what did. My neck did not snap on takeoff, nor did I require a straitjacket to remain in my seat. The plane did not jerk its way up in roller-coaster fashion or plunge straight to the earth for landing. 1 had a feeling of rather unsettling normalcy.

I asked myself: As a paying passenger, would I want to fly in an SST, even at the expected premium price of 30% above regular economy class? The answer was yes. It was not a quick or easy yes, nor would it apply on the routes I fly most often, such as the North Atlantic. But given the opportunity to avoid a 14-hour flight to Asia, I would bend strongly in the direction of the SST. "This is a normal plane that will get you there in half the time," a French aerospace official said. Why should we want that even if it is a normal plane? That is a hard question to answer. I flew supersonically this week, and it seemed very much like getting to Everest in an armchair.

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