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The Paris crash was a combination of factors.
One issue was boldness of the Tu144 captain. The Concorde’s display was considered by all as being boring, uninteresting and lack-lustre, so the Tu captain decided to spice things up. Bad move when issue No2 arose...
Secondly was the now admitted to (after many decades!) of the French flying a Mirage covertly doing photographs of the aircraft in flight, with the Tu captain having to take evasive action from the Mirage coming in too close ( the Soviets were not made aware of the presence of the Mirage seeing it was espionage!). The first officer of the Tu had been taking photos of this but the French and Soviet government came to a mutual agreement regarding the issue.
The Tu144 wasn’t a total disaster but not fantastic either. Revolutionary. Heck, the US trying to make an SST nearly sent Boeing bankrupt before the US introduced supersonic laws. Disaster...DC-10...over 30 hull losses and 1000+ fatalities
There is a saying in aviation: There are old pilots and bold pilots but no old bold pilots.
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