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Originally Posted by Hussman75
I stand corrected in the details, nevertheless, a VERY small production run...
It was only a small run because short sighted bean counters forced their airlines to do this. Just like sighted bean counters forced the UK government of the 1960s to scrap the British Space Program.
But now Russia, France and USA all make money from space rockets, Britain could have done the same but our government listened to bean counters.
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Given those three factors, each seat on the aircraft commanded a premium fare, which for the average traveler is unrealistically high. Was it successful in its niche, yes... But as a multi- frequency per day long haul trunkliner? Not a chance, even trans Atlantic...
Sorry have to disagree.
BA and AF pushed the seat price of Concorde up as they didn’t want normal people to fly on her. They only wanted VIPs, pop stars, yuppies, businessmen, bankers and rich people to fly on Concorde so the high seat price pushed the seats out of the range of normal people.
If more Concordes had been made and ticket prices had been set lower then being a multi- frequency per day long haul trunk liner would have been normal for it.
Concorde was never designed to be a one off design, just like the 707, DC8 and 747 where not designed to be one offs. All these planes where developed and evolved from the original to what they are and where very successful.
Same would have happened to Concorde, in the later half of 1970s Concorde B was being designed which would have been bigger, longer range and carried more people.
But our short sighted government scrapped it and we lost a world beating SST.
If Concorde B had been allowed to develop and evolve by now we would have had 300 seat Concorde B capable of flying LA to Tokyo or LHR to LA in one jump at mach 2.
Technically nothing was stopping us.
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it wasn't to the average international passenger looking to get from A to B.
It would have been if BA had dropped its prices while still making a profit.
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The aircraft was expensive to develop
It was very expensive to develop but you need to understand why.
Unlike the 707 and other subsonics which already had general data on how they would behave at x speed, at x height and with x passengers there was no similar data on Concorde.
Concorde had to fly as fast an F14 but had to carry 100 people + crew in normal clothes and land at normal airports. The passengers didn’t need to know how to fly Concorde or the dangers of mach 2 flight or g-forces at 60,000 ft.
Concorde had be as safe and as reliable as a normal car to be used every day for 30 years or more.
That was a very tall spec and no hard data (in civil aviation) existed on this, nothing existed like this. No one knew how a huge delta wing would behave carrying 100 people, there where so many unknowns.
Airbus had to find out and develop all these things as they went a long.
Due to her speed and altitude Concorde was also tested more than any other airliner in history, Concorde developed cutting edge technology never used before all this cost huge sums of money hence why the development costs where so high. That data still exists and forms a base on which future SSTs can be built at bit less cost as you don’t need to re-invent the wheel.
But the cost of design, development of Concorde, the design for every thing including 14 production Concordes was still a lot less than the wooden model Boeing gave the US tax payer.
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operate and maintain. There's no question about that.
No it wasn’t, if it was that expensive then BA (being a PLC) would have grounded Concorde in the 1980s.
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No argument there... It's performance was eye watering!
Not when you flew on it as you never felt the speed, you never felt breaking the sound barrier, you never felt mach 1 or mach 2.
You just looked at the clock and where then told you’ve arrived at JFK and that was it.
You only ever saw this raw power if you saw her on take off as nothing could beat a Concorde take off, it was spectacular.
However next time you flew to New York on a subsonic, 3 ½ hrs after take off your body expected to be in JFK, but when your mind knew you still had another 4 hrs stuck on a 747 that’s when Concorde’s speed hit you and you realised what Concorde was.
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27 is long, but others have easily outlasted it... Check the 737, 747 and DC-9 families for no kidding longevity. All three right in the 35-40 year (round numbers) service bracket on main day to day routes.
Concorde would have done the same as BA had real plans to extend her life to 2015 and beyond, I think round 1998-2000 BA’s CEO said this on UK tv.
But when Air France and Airbus pulled the plug, when Airbus and Air France refused to let any one else take over Air France Concordes BA had where forced in to some thing they didn’t want.
Same principle can be applied to any other airliner.
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Think of it this way, if the SST was so successful, why wasn't it on multiple frequencies (ie: 3+ flights) LHR-JFK or CDG-JFK- as examples- per day?
Until the Paris crash for BA it was.
For 27 years and especially after the 1980s (when BA started making real money from Concorde) they proved demand was there and to meet demand they had 4 Concorde flights per day, every day from LHR to JFK, JFK to LHR.
With remaining 2 as backups for each flight, if one being used had failed the backup Concorde would have been used and last Concorde was used on charter flights or was being serviced.
If BA could have got their hands on more Concordes, they would have and would have had more flights per day, the sky was the limit.
You can use the same principle to any airline and any type of plane.
Air France never marketed their Concorde’s correctly, so they lost out big time and I feel only kept theirs flying for national pride.
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In the long run, it made operating Concorde unfeasible. High costs, high prices, low demand. It was un-sustainable formula. Pure and simple.
LOL.
No it didn’t demand was normal to high as BA broke even or made money on every Concorde flight.
Until Concorde was forced out of service by Airbus and Air France the formula was sustainable as over 20 years of service proved it was sustainable in the long run.
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Simple, it wasn't in demand. Were first class seats in demand? Sure, but by your info, it was clear that more travellers bought tickets in standard first class, or in economy.
Most 1st class travellers didn’t know a Concorde ticket was only 20 % more than 1st class (as BA never told them), they thought Concorde ticket was 2-3 times price of 1st class when it wasn’t.
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drove the carriers' to schedule higher capacity aircraft as opposed to Concorde.
They only did that as they didn’t have Concorde so they had to offer some thing different and bit cheaper, but this didn’t kill Concorde, it just made Concorde even more desirable and she still made loadsa money for BA.
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Any sensibly run business spends money to keep its equipment and property in top form... While I don't debate you on BA's expenditures to do just that, bear in mind here that the $132 million cost is being recouped across only 7 airframes. This expenditure would have been approved against forecast loads/trip revenues (not always accurate numbers) and would have been broken down and passed along to the passengers as increased fares and in some cases, potentially reduced service.
Take that expenditure against a fleet of 30 747's each with 350+ seats (for example) and it becomes a less and less noticeable financial burden to your average traveller. .
Not really writing off / scrapping $132 million on goods and service pre paid for but not used was still a huge loss, waste of time, money and resources for BA.
Imagine if you bought a new car, spent huge sums on pre-paying for parts and servicing in the future but where suddenly forced to scrap the car and you could not get refund on these pre paid things, you’d make a huge loss and I bet you’d be cheesed off.
Same principle applied to BA and as I said before I feel Airbus forced BA to do this.
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Exactly. The aircraft proved unfeasible and inefficient to operate in the same way as a 747, DC-10 or (later) a 767 over long haul routes.
No it didn’t, Until 2000 Paris crash every xmas Concorde even flew to Lapland on the father xmas flights with young kids and families.
For 27 years the plane was feasible and for the speed it flew 0 – 1350 mph Concorde was more efficient than 747, DC-10 or (later) a 767 over long haul routes and over the same speed range.
For short haul routes (LHR to Paris, LHR to Scotland, LHR to Ireland or LHR to main land Europe) Concorde could not fly economically as her airframe and engines where never designed to do this, where as A380, 747, DC-10 or (later) a 767 can fly short haul routes extremely easily.
Concorde was purely designed to fly intercontinental routes (UK / France to America, UK / France to Canada, UK/France to Caribbean islands, France to South America) at mach 2 as that’s where her airframe design and engines showed what she could do and boy she did it as nothing could touch her.
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The airlines didn't have or anticipate enough demand to fill ~100 first class seats, whereas they did have the demand to fill roughly 30 FC seats, along with 250 (or more) economy seats on many routes. The numbers just didn't work, and it would have been folly to try to force the situation...
That’s wrong, leaving a side a few hundred $s business class and 1st class on a 747 are around 100 seats, the same seats which until 2000 Paris crash filled Concorde.
Until 2000 Paris crash Concorde and 1st class, Business and Economy on 747 existed extremely happily together as demand for both was there.
Like I said on every Concorde BA either broke even or made money, if in the mid 1990s BA had not got greedy and pushed up the price their Concorde tickets demand would have out stripped supply.
The 737 was never designed to 100% economy class, it was designed as a mixture but Ryan Air (a huge budget airline in Europe) sells tickets dirt cheap and almost every flight is full.
Ryan air proved they could make money by selling dirt cheap 737 tickets instead selling very expensive 737 tickets.
If the same business model had been used on Concorde believe me there would have been huge punch ups as business men and people fought to fly on Concorde.
Even if a Ryan Air Concorde ticket had been sold for around £1000 one way it still would have been cheaper than business class on 747, more people would have flown on Concorde than any other plane.
The demand for an SST is there for the taking.
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Agreed... Airbus did give BA the shaft on this one, and it was particularly disappointing from an enthusiast's standpoint...
In Nov 2003 Mike Bannister - Chief BA Concorde pilot did a lecture on Concorde, he said a huge lot of people who used Concorde regularly where extremely upset at her demise as now their journey times for LHR – JFK where increased to 3 days instead of 3 ½ hrs.
1 business day = 7 hrs excluding 1 hr lunch
So it took 1 business day to fly from LHR to JFK, 1 day to do business and roughly 1 business day to get home = 3 days (72 hrs).
With the added cost of hotel rooms I guess the total cost of the business flight was more than a Concorde flight and all this adds up.
Even now in the days of webcams, seeing each other face to face in real life is lot more important that talking to each via a tv screen.
Concorde filled this basic human need.
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Flows directly to my earlier statement about politics... The Johnson Administration played its games, as per usual at the time. Boeing got the nod in 1966... This inexperience in turn led to high development costs and (as a result) high projected operating costs, along with a protracted development cycle and a later than targeted entry into service. Nixon cut it off in '71.
Even if the aircraft had made it to service, the complexity of the aircraft (swing wings, triple hinged nose, new engines and a host of other items) still would have generated a high ownership cost which likely would have resulted in higher fares for passengers booking seats on 2707- served routes.
True and that’s where Boeing fell down and Europe (France, UK, USSR) succeeded as the designs for their SSTs where much simpler.
When Boeing realised their mistake and made their design simpler but it was to late and USA Concorde was scrapped.
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I shudder to think what Lockheed would have produced. The maintenance headaches likely would have made the C-5 seem reliable! :mrgreen:
Why ?
The F104 was a brilliant fighter which was sold to countless air forces, Nasa used it a lot to set world speed records, the SR71 is still the fastest long range air breathing plane ever made, its a true legend.
Due to the F104 and SR71 Lockheed had the experience and know how to make an a USA SST which would have been as simple as Concorde in design and maintenance costs as for an SST.
I am extremely confident they would have succeeded.
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I don't doubt your Concorde knowledge- I'm rather impressed-
Thanks ?
Its been a labour of love and over 27 years you get to know most things.
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but I used the example as a means to illustrate the point that an SST type aircraft isn't what's wanted or needed, and isn't sustainable in service in the modern airline world.
Sorry have to disagree, when the 707, DC8 and BAC Comet came seats on all those planes where probably equal to the price of Concorde seats v 747 seats in 2003.
But people still flew on those planes as lots of them had been made, over time using economies of scale the seat prices gradually came down to more realistic level.
Same can be done for any SST. If lots of Concordes had been made over time using economies of scale the seat prices gradually would have came down to more realistic level with out charging huge prices.
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If the airlines can put sufficient butts in seats on a 777 to meet FC, Biz and Economy demands on a given route, X times per day, and that airframe either maximizes efficiency or is a reasonable compromise, then why spend the extra $$ on an airplane than costs more (on multiple levels), probably carries less, commands a higher sector fare as a result and could easily drive down demand on that route? Just doesn't make good business sense
Unlike Air France which is mainly state owned ,in 1980s BA was privatised and became a real business.
For 27 years and especially after the 1980s when BA started making real money from Concorde they proved demand was there and to meet demand they had 4 Concorde flights per day, every day from LHR to JFK, JFK to LHR.
With remaining 2 as backups for each flight and last one was used on charter flights or was being serviced.
If BA could have got their hands on more Concordes, more flights per day would have happened each way, the sky was the limit.
When public found out how much they could do in one day, they jumped on Concorde like Homer Simpson jumps on donuts. Its all about saving time and getting from A to B in the fastest possible time.
Why be stuck on a plane for 7 hrs when you can fly the same distance in half the time ?
People will pay more to get from A to B faster than before.
If people didn’t care about getting fast from A to B then there was no reason to make 707, you could have still used propeller planes like the constellation to fly the same route.
Or you could have used ships as before planes each ship carried hundreds/thousands of people to get from A to B.
