What Happened to the Concordes?
airandspace.si.edu
These days, it takes seven hours to fly from New York to London, compared to under three hours flying at twice the speed of sound on the Concorde. When I started my internship at the National Air and Space Museum, I was determined to learn why.

Why didn’t it succeed?

Concorde flights came to a screeching halt after only 27 years of operation on October 24, 2003. The reason? Excessive cost, high fares, and loud noise. On a regular flight, Concordes consumed 6,771 gallons of fuel, which quickly exceeded the profit made from the flight. In addition to that, only a total of 20 Concordes were built and no airline ordered them except for Air France and British Airways, who had to as they were state-run airlines at the time.

Oh, and a 2000 crash that killed everyone on board (109 people) and four people on the ground.

  • PhobosAnomaly@feddit.ukEnglish
    26·
    3 days ago

    I lived under the Heathrow-Noo Yoik flight path, and every evening within a couple of minutes, there’d be a dull thud sound on the roof.

    By that point, the plane has reached a supersonic speed and the sonic boom was striking the ground in a reduced fashion. It just sounded like someone had dropped a bag of sand on the house.

    This was of course back before the days of ADSB tracking.