David Niven glided into the Concorde cockpit clutching a flute of the finest Dom Perignon. Pilot Christopher Orlebar turned to greet the raffish actor and together they watched the fiery orb of the sun sink below the horizon as they cruised at twice the speed of sound.

Such encounters were all in a day's work for Orlebar. Muhammad Ali, Paul McCartney and Elizabeth Taylor - who, befitting a friend of Michael Jackson was obsessed with the aircraft's ability to change the shape of its nose - all regularly wandered down to his flightdeck. Prince Charles also sat next to the 57-year-old pilot, joking that the crotch strap on the plane's emergency jumpseat held the potential to 'ruin a dynasty'.

Orlebar's only other distraction would come from the waftings of roast beef as the chief steward wheeled the colossal silver salver down the aisle. 'The ambience was so charmingly decadent. Muhammad Ali would write poems and call them the fastest poetry he had ever written. But we were travelling at supersonic,' said the pilot, who flew Concorde between 1976 and 1986.

McCartney would be transfixed by the experience. On one journey they left London in the evening, proceeding to outpace the spinning of the Earth to the extent that Orlebar and the former Beatle caught up with the setting sun for the second time that day.

Orlebar turned to McCartney and offered him the title of a new hit 'Flying Into Yesterday'. Orlebar even hummed a tune. McCartney never heeded his advice. It didn't matter to Orlebar. He had been witness to an era of opulence now confined to history, never likely to be repeated.

Decadence is dead. At least for a travel industry founded on elitist values and a shameless willingness to offer the most extravagant services to the most well-paid. In more austere days such excesses seem faintly vulgar. The end of Concorde, and its iconic image of luxurious travel, means no-holds-barred finery has been replaced by no-frills.

Last week's announcement that Concorde - the most exclusive, ambitious aircraft ever built - is to be retired is the latest development in a trend that is rapidly redefining the way we travel. It also reflects Britain's shifting cultural attitude to decadence.

Even the QE2, once the world's most luxurious, languid mode of transport, has fallen victim following Cunard's decision to retire the vessel from the Atlantic. Elsewhere, airlines are beginning to reject the very concept of first-class and sales of luxury car brands are struggling according to some dealers. Even on Britain's congested rail network, first-class compartments stand empty alongside overcrowded 'cattle trucks'.

Behaviouralists blame the democratisation of travel for the phasing out of opulence. Underpinning the shift is the gradual dilution of Britain's class system. Every weekend the Gucci-shaded glitterati rub shoulders with businessmen and students on Britain's booming budget carriers.

Even those at the forefront in the conception of Concorde appear to have adjusted to these more pragmatic times.

Peter Baker, 77, was one of the first pilots to fly Concorde in the late 1960s. Chances are you are now likely to find him slumming it at the back of the plane like the rest of us. 'They offer a perfectly acceptable service,' he said.

The concept of travel as hedonistic has also rapidly dated. For modern passengers, the fun starts from the moment they disembark. 'Travel was initially only available to the very rich,' said Philip Butterworth-Hayes, civil aviation editor of Flight International . 'It was only in the 1960s and 1970s when the concept of mass tour operators began to offer access to all of society.'

The provision of international travel for everyone has irrevocably undermined the romance of travel, he believes. Its glamour has been truly demystified by the rise of budget carriers such as Easyjet and Ryanair - brands which shamelessly flaunt the absence of indulgence as a key selling point. Concorde's demise is simply the final act in the deconstruction of elitist travel.

Others claim that modern society has lost its stomach for the shameless extravagance that characterised the days of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan's 'greed is good' 1980s.

'People are less likely to flaunt their affluence,' said Harry Goodman, who personified 'pile it high, sell it cheap' holidays until his International Leisure Group collapsed after the 1991 Gulf war.

'Concorde was a romantic dream, the last place you could have Joan Collins sitting next to Henry Kissinger. It signalled a bygone age of elegant travel,' added Butterworth-Hayes.

Instead, flying has become a service that millions use to visit their grandparents, travelling in an orange jet for the price of a few pints, according to Nikki MacLeod, senior lecturer in cultural tourism at Greenwich University.

'People aren't really going for the holiday of a lifetime like they did perhaps 20 or 30 years ago, and there has been a move away from that very opulent approach to travel.'

International travel has never been cheaper. In real terms, the cost has fallen 55 per cent over 25 years. A family of four can enjoy a two-week package holiday five times a year for the price of a standard £8,200 Concorde fare from London to New York. For bargain-hunters it has been possible to fly to mainland Europe for 99p these past few years.

Roger Mackett, professor of transport studies at University College London, said people are increasingly spinning out their budgets to cram in more foreign holidays.

'A weekend abroad can cost much the same as a weekend in the Lake District,' he added.

In 1952, Britons took 150,000 overseas holidays. Last year that figure rose to 36 million, and will spiral to 80 million in 50 years' time, according to the Association of British Travel Agents.

Virgin Atlantic no longer even bothers with an official first-class section, considering the phrase itself redundant. And this October - weeks before Concorde makes its final voyage - British Airways will scrap its first-class quota on six as yet unnamed routes.

Industry executives have realised that fame and iconography have their own special price. When the QE2's refit backfired a few years ago it attracted international ridicule. Back then, trying to enter the first-class dining room of a transatlantic liner in anything else than a black dinner jacket would have meant running the risk of being keel-hauled. Today, cruise companies are distancing themselves from the old formal codes. 'Dressing for dinner' now means swapping shorts and T-shirt for chinos and, er, T-shirt.

Train operators are also belatedly coming round to the fact that first class is increasingly defunct. Passengers are no longer willing to pay quadruple the fare for freshly laundered headrest covers and more legroom.

A year ago train company Chiltern announced it was considering the abolition of first class, embarrassed by the fact only about 30 per cent of seats are sold while other customers are forced to stand.

'If you look at some of the long-distance train companies, such as Virgin West Coast or GNER, the first-class is practically empty,' said Caroline Jones, spokesman for the Rail Passengers Council. 'So you have a situation where there are one or two people in three carriages on a busy eight-carriage train.'

The rejection of decadence is also being felt by some of the world's most famous motor manufacturers. Luxury car sales in London were reportedly down by 15 per cent even before the Iraqi conflict's impact on consumer spending.

Even 'luxury' has lost its cachet, becoming so overused it is now meaningless. For the savvy consumer of the twenty-first century, it can simply mean overpriced and overhyped.

That may explain why the international luxury travel market makes up just 3 per cent of the industry's volume, surprisingly small when consumers have never enjoyed more disposable income.

Roger de Peyrecave, travel sector analyst for PricewaterhouseCoopers, has detected a seismic 'downsizing' among travellers.

'Those who might once have flown Concorde will probably now fly conventional first class, and those who flew first class might move down to business and so on.'

Inevitably, this has destroyed the market for which Concorde, QE2 and first-class rail journeys were created.

'There used to be no one who did it like Concorde,' said Goodman. 'It was an occasion, smoked salmon canapés at the gate. And when you flew you would get little things that were all part of the exclusivity. That doesn't seem to happen any more.'

Others are less sentimen tal. Sir Freddie Laker was on an advisory panel that helped to persuade a wavering British government to invest in Concorde in the 1960s. Speaking from the Bahamas, where he still runs an airline flying to the US, 80-year-old Laker said bluntly: 'If they cannot make money on it they ought to put it in a museum.'

He believes technology always goes forwards and we will see supersonic passenger travel again, 'but not in my lifetime or yours'.

So for romantics a return to the glamour age of travel remains an elusive dream. 'I am waiting for the return of the airship,' said British Airways Captain Jock Lowe, who also flew Concorde for years.

Three-quarters of a century after the hydrogen-filled Hindenburg disintegrated in a mid-air inferno, experts have long plotted a return for its helium-filled offspring. Environmentally-friendly and undeniably romantic, says Lowe.

So sit back, relax and enjoy your flight. Time from London to New York? A mere 15 hours; watch five movies.