Concorde was a fantastic technological achievement; It's beautiful and revolutionary. My heart really wants it to be successful.
However, my head tells me that no amount of tweaking or tuning will change the fundamental problem with Concorde.
The root problem with this aircraft is that people prefer cheaper flights over faster flights.
The real success that we can take from the Concorde program was that some of the technology found its way into the A300 program and its derivative, the A320.
Cheap, reliable aircraft are what people want. Fast, expensive ones are cool, but not really economic.
I think it all depends on how much cost savings for how much speed. In today's dollars, a round-trip ticket on Concorde from New York to London was $20,000, or 4x today's business class price. For that, you got a tiny seat in a cramped cabin.
What we're targeting at Boom is an improvement over business class. We're making it profitable for airlines to operate the plane at today's business class fares. We're getting you there in half the time. And instead of a cramped two-and-two cabin arrangement, it's a one-and-one configuration (every seat is a window AND an aisle). The seats are similar to today's domestic first class seats, only designed for productivity.
So the choice a business traveler could soon face is: Would you like to get from New York to London in 7 hours in a lay-flat bed, or in 3h15m in a comfortable, productive environment? Price is the same either way. We think most people will pick the supersonic flight.
It should be noted also that the premium cabin market today is much larger than it was a few decades ago.
And finally, premium-cabin economics are only the first step. We think there's a roadmap to making supersonic flight cheaper than subsonic flight is today. It will take a few decades, but that is absolutely the path that Boom is on.
> The root problem with this aircraft is that people prefer cheaper flights over faster flights.
Agreed. And that's not even mentioning the climate angle of it.
I've done some reading lately about the effects of air travel on climate. I was very depressed by what I found. Basically, air travel is terrible for global warming. Besides emissions of greenhouse gasses CO2 and NOx, the trails of water vapor ("contrails") form cirrus clouds that contribute to warming.
Unlike the electric car, there is no emerging technology that can save air travel from this environmental impact. Meanwhile, air travel is growing at ~5%/year. At this rate, by mid-century air travel alone will consume the world's entire emissions allowance, if we want to keep global warming to 2 °C or less. And supersonic travel appears to be even worse for the climate.
For all the talk about fighting global warming, I almost never hear about this. It seems like the most inconvenient truth of all: if we want to fight global warming, we have to fly less. This is a hard pill to swallow. Tesla is built on the idea that we can have cleaner cars without having to give up anything (because electric cars can be luxury items). But electric airplanes exist only as research curiosities -- they aren't up to the task of their fuel-burning counterparts. Right now it looks like the democratization of fast, world-wide travel might be a late 20th - early 21st century phenomenon that we can't get back. :(
I don't think it's that simple, if you asked someone if they would pay 50$ to save 8+ hours off a long flight I think a significant portion would say hell yes. So, it's more a question of cost vs. saved time.
50$ seems crazy as supersonic flight is going to use far more fuel, but it also means the aircraft, pilot, and flight attendants can make more trips. So, a minimal cost increase might be possible.
You could easily find out if you’re right. Most airlines offer the same routes direct both with and without stops. The non-stop flights usually cost more (sometimes a lot more) and are often full. At least some of those people are optimizing for time. So clearly there is a demand to pay more for shorter flights.
Big airports are already pretty saturated for traffic, and what most of us don't realize is that airplanes create vortices around the runway that the airport has to wait out. So more small planes can take off in an hour than large planes.
If you build smaller planes that fly farther, you don't need the hub and spoke pattern as much. If a direct flight cuts two hours off of your trip, makes it so you don't have to board two planes instead of one, that is both objectively faster and at least for me much less stressful.
According to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzB5xtGGsTc First/business class seats are where the airlines make all of their money, so Concord would be economically viable today.
> The root problem with this aircraft is that people prefer cheaper flights over faster flights.
I don't think this can be generalized to 100% of the market. There's probably a good percrnt of the personal travel market that would gladly pay more for a non stop flight than save a few bucks with a stop or two. Then buisness travelers whose company pays for their flights will probably not mind the small cost difference for saving of time.
not sure, in western Europe I take the bullet train even when the airplane is cheaper, because it's faster and more convenient. But of course the bullet train is generally only slightly more expensive, if we were talking 20x price difference, I might learn patience.
A second aspect of speed versus price, is that in airplane travel a lot of time is spent accessing the airports, going through security, waiting in the departure queue, etc. Offsetting those 3-5h with a faster travel time might prove challenging.
Eh, Concorde turned a decent profit for BA of £50m a year or thereabouts.
It wasn't for "normal" people, it was for the super rich, captains of industry and movie stars for whom saving 4.5 hours was worth spending the equivalent of a 1st class cabin seat on a slow airliner.
[1]There's a great story about the making of the Band Aid "Do they know it's Christmas?" record. The recording session was underway and Boy George hadn't turned up. He was eventually tracked down to his New York hotel, sleeping off a heavy night. He got up, high tailed it to the airport and caught the next Concorde to London - and made it before the end of the recording session.
There are certainly some diminishing returns with high speed air travel. If it takes you, say, at least an hour to travel to/from the airport in the best case (e.g. no security wait or using TSA precheck) then the difference between a Mach 0.8 and Mach 2 flight isn't that huge percentage wise, especially when you factor in the time it takes to get to cruising altitude. On extremely long flights it would make a bigger difference which might result in a more comfortable flight but it doesn't fundamentally change whether or not the flight takes up most of an entire day or not.
That doesn't change until you get into extremely fast travel such as ballistic point-to-point transport. When you have flight travel times that are on the order of an hour or two (including overhead like vehicle loading and unloading) then it becomes possible to integrate them into a day where they are just a part, which opens up a lot more possibilities and might justify the expense.
Depends. In general I would say you are right, but that leaves out the business traveler of today. Concorde was to far ahead of its time and then got 100% screwed on bad luck with the Oil crisis in the 70s.
I have done 50K miles so far this year between CA and APAC. The flight is 12+ hours most times. Give me something that is +25-40% $ on a business class ticket today that take the flight time to 3 hours and I will buy it. I think that to be true even for the economy tickets for the long haul flights. I think people in the back of the plan would pay lets say $1200 for that flight to Tokyo over the current $900 for the flight time to be cut by 8-9 hours.
My flight to visit family is 21 hours in the air. Add layover - 2hrs, check-in, security and customs, we are looking at 30 hours of travel one way. I'd happily pay 50% more for a faster nonstop flight.
There is a niche of people willing to pay extra to go faster and a number of startups are looking at providing supersonic (Mach 2) commercial flights (Boom is the most famous).
what if they made a flying hotel and it timed it's flight for you arrive at a convenient time? that way it could be very slow and carry a lot of passengers.
People don't mind paying a small incentive to cut travel time. I don't have analytics data to prove this, but this is how generally people book flights when searching on expedia or any other website:
1. Search flights from A to B, show me the cheapest flights.
2. Then comes time preference(Should fly Friday instead of thursday? morning vs evening)
3. filter results by least no. of hops(This definitely shows people want to cut down on flying time and most people still pay an incentive to reach their destination faster).
I feel the world and society had many changes since 60s, 70s. People today are more interested in reaching their destination fast and can pay a small premium. This is a change in economics since the Concorde time. People who are paying for Business class and First class, would prefer paying a premium and reaching the destination faster.
People would still want cheap, reliable aircrafts and they should have that option but supersonic commercial flights on certain trans pacific & trans atlantic routes is definitely feasible.
Concorde had high maintenance costs - it required special fuel, special tires and other maintainence costs which made it financially non-viable. If any new supersonic flight addresses these costs, then it will open a whole new world of faster air travel.
> The real success that we can take from the Concorde program was that some of the technology found its way into the A300 program and its derivative, the A320.
Correct, the Concorde program kickstarted the French aeronautic industry. I don’t know for the UK part, but I think UK was pretty advanced already with the De Havailland and DC-3/4 companies. Which, ironically, collapsed for trying to do things too fast and being earlier than others. For example the DC-9 would famously lose parts and doors, one of those which founds its way in the... Concorde, causing the crash in Paris.
I have a hard time imagining SST making any sense given that we spend hours stuck in traffic, then stuck in the TSA line, customs, stuck in traffic again. The gain of a few hours from NY to London or Paris doesn't seem enough. If you could extend the range to where you can do really long-haul flights maybe it would be interesting to a tiny elite.
There's a wealth of public transit options that will reliably get you from Manhattan to JFK in about an hour.
I haven't waited in a security line at an airport for more than 30 minutes in years. When lines get long they drop the security theater and start letting people through very quickly. I imagine people who are willing to pay for SST would also pay the troll toll and spend comparatively very little time in security lines.
For context, I fly (usually coast to coast) about a dozen or more times a year.
I've been lucky enough to fly business class with work - Virgin from Heathrow to New York.
A car collects you at your house and drives you to the airport. You are checked on to your flight whilst still in the car when you arrive, and your suitcases are taken out of the boot of the car. You then walk through security and passport control and into the lounge. I don't recall any queuing at all.
I'm not saying the aggravations you discuss don't exist, but at the price point for SST planes (which I imagine would be predominantly business class tickets), they are dramatically reduced.
These will be most useful for flights that cross the sleep time barrier, going across the pacific. There is a segment of people that cannot sleep on flights, and another segment that wouldn't need the larger first class sleep pod seats if it can be done in 5 hours.
Also you can get to SFO from SF in about 30 minutes with an uber, and get through the lines fairly quick with pre-check & global entry. These flights would be godsends for the apple engineer that has to get on a flight to china asap for some factory issue.
Is there any reason why people don't buy Concorde for Private jet? Surely there are lot more people who can afford this compare to what was 20 years ago. And those who buy private jet are likely to care about the much shorter trip.
Or is it Concorde, due to its thrust and speed aren't / can't be as comfortable ?
Actually I don’t think there is anyone who can afford it tbh.
You’ll need to build a whole supporting infrastructure around it which doesn’t exist.
No pilots, no crew to serve no parts, it can’t land or take off from most airports and it can’t fly over most areas due to ban on supersonic flight.
At this point you’ll need to start a whole aerospace company to support it, recertify it with civilian air transport authorities and possibly even build new airports or runways for it.
Even if you have 50 billion net worth that would be out of your reach.
It is really sad that this design wasn't built. The Concorde was a great design, but obviously, you don't hit perfection on the first attempt. The Concorde "B" shows, that as with any design, it is important to have enough iterations to get real efficiency.
The Shuttle was a great design for the late 70ies. If it had at least a significant design iteration every 5-10 years, it could have been a bigger success. Similarly if the Concorde hat gotten 2-3 design iterations over its life, it could have been very successfull.
SpaceX is successful, because they are not trying to fly the initial F9 - it is said that they actually didn't built the exact same rocket twice, but always added small improvements.
It wasn't really the issue. Yes, that was a major problem but the real issue was the plane was old.
The newest model had been built in 78 (G-BOAF, Aircrat 216). Think about it, how many airlines back in 2000 were flying planes that were between 22 and 25 years old? Not that many. Just looking right now, AF and BA are around 12 to 13 years for their average fleet age.
Yes, the airframe was aging slowly because high temperatures while flying would prevent humidity from building up but the maintenance on this aircrat was expensive as hell compared to more recent aircrafts.
And it was a downward sliding slope. Anything was costlier on this thing because pretty much everything had to be custom built compared to other planes.
And in the end, it stopped flying not only because AF and BA decided to retire their Concorde fleet but above all because Airbus retired the aircraft certificate of airworthiness.
Is it political? Economical? Honestly, probably both. Airbus probably didn't want to get dragged in the mud again if anything else were to happen.
Tires? As in plural? I thought it only happened once and that was due to parts from another plane being left on the runway. Any aircraft with tires mounted under a wing (fuel tank) will have the potential that if a tire blows, a piece with enough force could knock a hole through it.
Future engine economics would have been interesting, as well as digital design models once there was a market for Concorde B+, C and so on. Current engines for commercial jets are bypass fan designs. If the same efficiency gains had been achieved for the type of engine in a concorde... (who knows? maybe military jets are now significantly more efficient)
An interesting aspect in the demise of the Concorde has nothing to do with the Concorde, but how other long haul airplanes changed with time. By the late 90s, you had lay-flat business class seats, in flight entertainment, and even fancier service in first class. The Concorde, on the other hand, was a small plane (2 by 2, single aisle), and while it cost more than first class, seats were similar to premium economy today (38" seat pitch). As you had to pay much more for a crappier seat, it is rumored that as much as half the passengers on each flight were just free upgrades and award flights.
It would be nice to make one of these much like a resto mod car or how one might make a space invaders game cabinet with a Raspberry Pi on board. Imagine if you could 3D print the thing, slap in the dashboard from an A340 and the engines from some retired Eurofighter Typhoons.
[+] [-] JanSolo|7 years ago|reply
However, my head tells me that no amount of tweaking or tuning will change the fundamental problem with Concorde. The root problem with this aircraft is that people prefer cheaper flights over faster flights.
The real success that we can take from the Concorde program was that some of the technology found its way into the A300 program and its derivative, the A320.
Cheap, reliable aircraft are what people want. Fast, expensive ones are cool, but not really economic.
[+] [-] elidourado|7 years ago|reply
I think it all depends on how much cost savings for how much speed. In today's dollars, a round-trip ticket on Concorde from New York to London was $20,000, or 4x today's business class price. For that, you got a tiny seat in a cramped cabin.
What we're targeting at Boom is an improvement over business class. We're making it profitable for airlines to operate the plane at today's business class fares. We're getting you there in half the time. And instead of a cramped two-and-two cabin arrangement, it's a one-and-one configuration (every seat is a window AND an aisle). The seats are similar to today's domestic first class seats, only designed for productivity.
So the choice a business traveler could soon face is: Would you like to get from New York to London in 7 hours in a lay-flat bed, or in 3h15m in a comfortable, productive environment? Price is the same either way. We think most people will pick the supersonic flight.
It should be noted also that the premium cabin market today is much larger than it was a few decades ago.
And finally, premium-cabin economics are only the first step. We think there's a roadmap to making supersonic flight cheaper than subsonic flight is today. It will take a few decades, but that is absolutely the path that Boom is on.
[+] [-] haberman|7 years ago|reply
Agreed. And that's not even mentioning the climate angle of it.
I've done some reading lately about the effects of air travel on climate. I was very depressed by what I found. Basically, air travel is terrible for global warming. Besides emissions of greenhouse gasses CO2 and NOx, the trails of water vapor ("contrails") form cirrus clouds that contribute to warming.
Unlike the electric car, there is no emerging technology that can save air travel from this environmental impact. Meanwhile, air travel is growing at ~5%/year. At this rate, by mid-century air travel alone will consume the world's entire emissions allowance, if we want to keep global warming to 2 °C or less. And supersonic travel appears to be even worse for the climate.
For all the talk about fighting global warming, I almost never hear about this. It seems like the most inconvenient truth of all: if we want to fight global warming, we have to fly less. This is a hard pill to swallow. Tesla is built on the idea that we can have cleaner cars without having to give up anything (because electric cars can be luxury items). But electric airplanes exist only as research curiosities -- they aren't up to the task of their fuel-burning counterparts. Right now it looks like the democratization of fast, world-wide travel might be a late 20th - early 21st century phenomenon that we can't get back. :(
[+] [-] Retric|7 years ago|reply
50$ seems crazy as supersonic flight is going to use far more fuel, but it also means the aircraft, pilot, and flight attendants can make more trips. So, a minimal cost increase might be possible.
[+] [-] jedberg|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hinkley|7 years ago|reply
If you build smaller planes that fly farther, you don't need the hub and spoke pattern as much. If a direct flight cuts two hours off of your trip, makes it so you don't have to board two planes instead of one, that is both objectively faster and at least for me much less stressful.
[+] [-] clarkenheim|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sand500|7 years ago|reply
I don't think this can be generalized to 100% of the market. There's probably a good percrnt of the personal travel market that would gladly pay more for a non stop flight than save a few bucks with a stop or two. Then buisness travelers whose company pays for their flights will probably not mind the small cost difference for saving of time.
[+] [-] nraynaud|7 years ago|reply
A second aspect of speed versus price, is that in airplane travel a lot of time is spent accessing the airports, going through security, waiting in the departure queue, etc. Offsetting those 3-5h with a faster travel time might prove challenging.
[+] [-] philjohn|7 years ago|reply
It wasn't for "normal" people, it was for the super rich, captains of industry and movie stars for whom saving 4.5 hours was worth spending the equivalent of a 1st class cabin seat on a slow airliner.
[1]There's a great story about the making of the Band Aid "Do they know it's Christmas?" record. The recording session was underway and Boy George hadn't turned up. He was eventually tracked down to his New York hotel, sleeping off a heavy night. He got up, high tailed it to the airport and caught the next Concorde to London - and made it before the end of the recording session.
[1] https://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/making-of-band-a...
[+] [-] InclinedPlane|7 years ago|reply
That doesn't change until you get into extremely fast travel such as ballistic point-to-point transport. When you have flight travel times that are on the order of an hour or two (including overhead like vehicle loading and unloading) then it becomes possible to integrate them into a day where they are just a part, which opens up a lot more possibilities and might justify the expense.
[+] [-] ggg9990|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] myrandomcomment|7 years ago|reply
I have done 50K miles so far this year between CA and APAC. The flight is 12+ hours most times. Give me something that is +25-40% $ on a business class ticket today that take the flight time to 3 hours and I will buy it. I think that to be true even for the economy tickets for the long haul flights. I think people in the back of the plan would pay lets say $1200 for that flight to Tokyo over the current $900 for the flight time to be cut by 8-9 hours.
[+] [-] 8ytecoder|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shin_lao|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jlebrech|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rajeshpant|7 years ago|reply
1. Search flights from A to B, show me the cheapest flights. 2. Then comes time preference(Should fly Friday instead of thursday? morning vs evening) 3. filter results by least no. of hops(This definitely shows people want to cut down on flying time and most people still pay an incentive to reach their destination faster).
I feel the world and society had many changes since 60s, 70s. People today are more interested in reaching their destination fast and can pay a small premium. This is a change in economics since the Concorde time. People who are paying for Business class and First class, would prefer paying a premium and reaching the destination faster.
People would still want cheap, reliable aircrafts and they should have that option but supersonic commercial flights on certain trans pacific & trans atlantic routes is definitely feasible.
Concorde had high maintenance costs - it required special fuel, special tires and other maintainence costs which made it financially non-viable. If any new supersonic flight addresses these costs, then it will open a whole new world of faster air travel.
[+] [-] tajen|7 years ago|reply
Correct, the Concorde program kickstarted the French aeronautic industry. I don’t know for the UK part, but I think UK was pretty advanced already with the De Havailland and DC-3/4 companies. Which, ironically, collapsed for trying to do things too fast and being earlier than others. For example the DC-9 would famously lose parts and doors, one of those which founds its way in the... Concorde, causing the crash in Paris.
[+] [-] debt|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samstave|7 years ago|reply
A constant.
Pick two.
[+] [-] Thaxll|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zwieback|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tetrep|7 years ago|reply
I haven't waited in a security line at an airport for more than 30 minutes in years. When lines get long they drop the security theater and start letting people through very quickly. I imagine people who are willing to pay for SST would also pay the troll toll and spend comparatively very little time in security lines.
For context, I fly (usually coast to coast) about a dozen or more times a year.
[+] [-] gadders|7 years ago|reply
A car collects you at your house and drives you to the airport. You are checked on to your flight whilst still in the car when you arrive, and your suitcases are taken out of the boot of the car. You then walk through security and passport control and into the lounge. I don't recall any queuing at all.
I'm not saying the aggravations you discuss don't exist, but at the price point for SST planes (which I imagine would be predominantly business class tickets), they are dramatically reduced.
[+] [-] woolvalley|7 years ago|reply
Also you can get to SFO from SF in about 30 minutes with an uber, and get through the lines fairly quick with pre-check & global entry. These flights would be godsends for the apple engineer that has to get on a flight to china asap for some factory issue.
[+] [-] bhouston|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rwmj|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matthewmcg|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] syncsynchalt|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VeejayRampay|7 years ago|reply
Yes I'm French, yes I'm salty.
[+] [-] inglor|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ksec|7 years ago|reply
Or is it Concorde, due to its thrust and speed aren't / can't be as comfortable ?
[+] [-] dogma1138|7 years ago|reply
You’ll need to build a whole supporting infrastructure around it which doesn’t exist.
No pilots, no crew to serve no parts, it can’t land or take off from most airports and it can’t fly over most areas due to ban on supersonic flight.
At this point you’ll need to start a whole aerospace company to support it, recertify it with civilian air transport authorities and possibly even build new airports or runways for it. Even if you have 50 billion net worth that would be out of your reach.
[+] [-] dasmoth|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _ph_|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] semessier|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EamonnMR|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mshook|7 years ago|reply
The newest model had been built in 78 (G-BOAF, Aircrat 216). Think about it, how many airlines back in 2000 were flying planes that were between 22 and 25 years old? Not that many. Just looking right now, AF and BA are around 12 to 13 years for their average fleet age.
Yes, the airframe was aging slowly because high temperatures while flying would prevent humidity from building up but the maintenance on this aircrat was expensive as hell compared to more recent aircrafts.
And it was a downward sliding slope. Anything was costlier on this thing because pretty much everything had to be custom built compared to other planes.
And in the end, it stopped flying not only because AF and BA decided to retire their Concorde fleet but above all because Airbus retired the aircraft certificate of airworthiness.
Is it political? Economical? Honestly, probably both. Airbus probably didn't want to get dragged in the mud again if anything else were to happen.
[+] [-] esaym|7 years ago|reply
Tires? As in plural? I thought it only happened once and that was due to parts from another plane being left on the runway. Any aircraft with tires mounted under a wing (fuel tank) will have the potential that if a tire blows, a piece with enough force could knock a hole through it.
[+] [-] MBCook|7 years ago|reply
The thing that killed it was runway debris.
[+] [-] ggm|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lowken10|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] russb|7 years ago|reply
CliveL was my favorite.
https://www.pprune.org/tech-log/423988-concorde-question.htm...
[+] [-] andr|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aj7|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Theodores|7 years ago|reply