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.

  • brucethemoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
    181·
    2 days ago

    Concorde is cool as heck, but honestly, supersonic travel is fundamentally impractical.

    It’s kinda like space “colonization.” It’s a really cool dream, but once you take a hard look at the physics (never mind engineering, just assume that will be worked out), it just makes little sense outside of science missions or niches like that.

    And if it’s really urgent these days… teleconference. Or charter a private jet between closer airports.

    I think it would be cool to have one or a few SS passenger planes in operation for weird niches (medical emergencies? Charity? Political flights? Stuff like that,) but that’s about it.

    • Womble@piefed.worldEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      It would make a lot more sense nowadays for Europe/NA to east Asia (or would for Europe if Russia were a reasonable country that could be trusted to fly over).