Concorde

[rafezetter]

I used to work in Horfield in Bristol and pretty much everyday see concorde fly overhead around midday, Now I live a stones throw from Filton Airfield and see the old gal fairly regularly sitting there at the top end of the runway.

I was really annoyed as my hernia Op was scheduled for the same day as the last flight over bristol and missed all of it...

I wish they would allow visitors again.

 

[Harbo]

I worked a fair bit in Datchet - Concord used to set off late morning - lovely sight but very noisy - if you were on the phone you couldn't hear anything else and had to explain "sorry can you hang-on until Concord has flown over?"

Rod

 

[RogerS]

So what proportion of BA's turnover was due to Concorde, and what proportion to it's sub-sonic fleet?

If Concorde, and supersonic passenger flight, was such a rip-roaring success, why did nobody emulate it? (I know the Russians tried, but that was more to do with nationalistic willy-waving than hard-headed commercialism.)

I know this would have been extremely unlikely, but what would the commercial consequences have been for British business if government, in making it's decision between Concorde and the British space programme in the late '50s/ early '60s, had gone for space? British businesses could now have been among the world leaders in satellite service provision - GPS, telecoms, television, you name it - with consequent tax revenues to the Treasury that would have rivalled the financial services sector. Instead, they plumped for the safe, but dead end, technology of supersonic air travel. How much did the Treasury benefit from that, in the end?

I'm not trying to denigrate the engineering needed to design, build and operate Concorde. It was - as I said in my post above - a superb achievement technically by British and French engineers. But commercially? Come on, chaps.

I won't even bother trying to either comprehend or answer this.

I know it's late in the evening, but it really isn't THAT hard to comprehend.

Concorde was a one or two route aircraft. Perhaps, with some willpower, it might have had a few more routes, but since it couldn't go supersonic over land (damage from sonic booms), it wasn't economically viable for any over-land route - it couldn't compete with sub-sonic aircraft on those routes. So - always a small fleet, no economies of scale for parts and maintenance. No other airline than BA and Air France would buy and operate it. Hence, unlike the Boeing and Airbus products, it was a commercial dead-end.

To understand the other part of this post, read my first post in this thread. It really isn't a complex argument.

As I said. I won't even bother trying to either comprehend or answer this. Your mind is closed to any other position regarding Concorde and so, even though your 'reasoning' is so full of holes, it is pointless even beginning to try and refute them.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

Some interesting reading here - http://www.concordesst.com/faq.html

It seems the development costs and most of the manufacturing costs of Concorde were bourne by the British and French governments, so the aircraft could only be described as 'profitable' by discounting these costs.

One small matter over which I do take issue with the article is that it says that the Americans couldn't make a supersonic airliner. Given that America has produced some of the most capable military aircraft on the planet, and managed to get men to and from the moon, to suggest that they couldn't build a supersonic jet is rather unlikely. I think it more probable that they undertook an analysis of development, manufacture and operating costs against potential revenue streams and decided that they'd be commercially better off building 747s instead.

Another point made is that without the Anglo-French cooperation on the Concorde project, it's quite probable that Airbus Industrie would never have happened - and that IS a commercial success. Perhaps, as much as the emotional and the national pride, that's Concorde's finest legacy.

 

[RogerS]

Huh...talk about cherry-picking. Select the points that support your prejudices but then go on to reject the ones that don't ! Now that's what I call being 'objective'.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

Some more background reading here, including some thoughts in answer to the question, "Why did Concorde fail?" - http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/planes/q0186.shtml

It seems that the Americans had a supersonic airliner in development (the Boeing SST) but for various commercial, rather than technical, reasons, development ceased.

 

[chippy1970]

I worked a fair bit in Datchet - Concord used to set off late morning - lovely sight but very noisy - if you were on the phone you couldn't hear anything else and had to explain "sorry can you hang-on until Concord has flown over?"

Rod

My friend had a car lot there in Horton it used to shake his portakabin when it flew over.

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[JustBen]

Wasn't it the Americans who 'acquired' the British plans for the stabiliser/elevator which enabled them to claim the X-1 as the first supersonic plane?

Maybe the Boeing SST didn't take off(excuse the pun) because of technical ability......

..... To and from the moon....... Hmmm....

 

[wellywood]

As I said in another post, I was stationed at RAF Fairford when Concorde made its maiden flight there from Bristol Filton. It was an amazing sight as it flew in accompanied by its Canberra chase plane.
Putting aside the question of economics, the general public perception is that it was scrapped because of the horrific crash in France. I accept that this is not the case but if it were and the same criterion was applied to other makes of aircraft, there would be barely anything flying.

 

[Drudgeon]

I thought I read that it was a rip-raoring success until after the AirFrance crash, after which they could barely sell a seat, which was pretty much the final nail in the coffin?

I am by no means an expert but I'm sure that's what I read/heard from a documentary.

And another thumbs up for the sound of success, 11am and 2pm I think were the flying times, remember working on a site in reading 15yrs ago and would hear it every day, never ever got bored of that sound and sight.

It has always amazed me that as a society obsessed with progression, that the supersonic passenger industry is probably the only industry in the world that has gone backwards (technologically speaking), but then I guess that comes along with the fact that everything is PLC nowadays and nobody really cares about anything other than £££££ for the shareholders, heck they'd send you across the atlantic in a pedalo if they thought it would make a better margin. (hammer)

 

[chippy1970]

If anyone's interested in knowing more about Concorde , discovery turbo is showing Concorde stuff all day today.

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[RogerS]

If anyone's interested in knowing more about Concorde , discovery turbo is showing Concorde stuff all day today.

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I'm guessing this is only on Sky

When I flew on Concorde a couple of thing stick in my mind. Just to the left of the door were banks of 1950's type toggle switches. In this modern age of fly-by-wire and computer screens, these really were an anachronism and just went to show just what a technological achievement this wonderful, brilliant awesome aircraft it was.

I also noticed that the door hinges where they appeared inside the fuselage had about 4" of dense insulating foam on them. Even with all that foam, once we'd reached cruising altitude, the outside of the foam was still surprisingly warm to the touch.

 

[chippy1970]

I'm on virginmedia But yeah it will be on cable or sat

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[RogerS]

I'm on virginmedia But yeah it will be on cable or sat

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Rats! Almost worth getting Sky for ! If anyone is able to burn the programmes to DVD then serious beer money is available