The Revival of Concorde

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/luxury/travel/83904/concorde-flights-planned-to-resume-and-aircraft-proposed-for-display-in-london.html?curator=MediaREDEF

by cryptoz • 11 years ago

115 135 11 years ago

telegraph.co.uk

johngalt2• 11 years ago

The Concorde is one of those early implementations that is just big enough to barely work, yet never really succeeds, while also sucking all the air out of the room for any other ideas. The aviation fan side of me would love to see the Concorde fly again but my gut says that trying to resurrect the Concorde will only delay any chance of regular supersonic flights in the future.

Turbo_hedgehog• 11 years ago

Reading the article, it's not headed back to commercial service but instead for air shows and private charters.

idlewords3• 11 years ago

There's nothing about Concorde that ruined it for anyone else. The problems that killed SST programs—high fuel costs and noise—remain unsolved. The plane was a pretty remarkable piece of engineering given the physical constraints.

qq66• 11 years ago

One more thing that shut down the Concorde was the post-9/11 increase in security procedures at airports, greatly diminshing the relative advantage of supersonic flights. If getting on the plane takes an extra (unpleasant) 45 minutes on each end, then the percentage time savings from supersonic flight is reduced.

greggman• 11 years ago

Is the noise truly a probably or was that just lobbying by Boeing to make sure it didn't succeed?

dragonwriter3• 11 years ago

The problems that killed SST programs—high fuel costs and noise—remain unsolved.

Reducing sonic boom noise is something we do understand.

gsnedders6• 11 years ago

Sonic booms are far better understood now than they were back then — the research done on the basis on the XB-70 (i.e., the Oklahoma City sonic boom tests) is arguably less relevant than ever, as we understand better than ever how to effect sonic booms, especially with shape of the aircraft.

brc6• 11 years ago

The fuel costs are just a function of ticket prices. The passenger pays the fuel prices.

Once BA worked out that most Concorde passengers didn't buy their own tickets, they increased pricing dramatically. The passengers didn't drop off.

In some markets, higher prices signal certain status which then allows even higher demand. Same with exclusive real estate, jewellery, artwork, etc. As long as supply is limited it's not necessarily a problem.

sandworm1014• 11 years ago

Is there any real advantage for 'regular supersonic flights' these days? Shaving an hour or two off the flying time is all well and good, but on nearly every trip I spend more time in the airports and taxis than in the air. Perhaps greater time savings could be made elsewhere and with far less effort.

dalke3• 11 years ago

FWIW, this article doesn't concern regular supersonic flights but 'fly-pasts at air shows and made available for corporate and special events, as well as for private charter.'

As to your question, it rather depends on the cost, doesn't it?

To start with, it saved about 4 hours on the Paris/NYC connection, not "an hour or two." If it were only $400 more to save 4 hours of overseas travel, then many would jump at it, and find it a real advantage.

ggreer2• 11 years ago

Supersonic aircraft wouldn't be used on shorter domestic routes. As you say, the time savings are insignificant. More importantly, sonic booms prohibit most over-land flights.

But supersonic transport could win for long-haul flights over ocean. Depending on the direction, SFO-TPE takes 11-14 hours. Going at mach 3 would cut that down to 4 or 5 hours. Airlines could charge significantly more for such speed. Faster trips also mean that each plane can make more trips per day. For a trans-pacific route, a 777 takes over 24 hours to go back-and-forth once. 300 passengers go west, 300 passengers go east. A mach 3 transport, even if it had half the capacity, could ferry more people in the same time period. If fuel costs were low enough (unlikely, I know), the supersonic craft could actually be more profitable than the 777.

BinaryIdiot• 11 years ago

I feel like the best use case is international flights. Being able to cut down the time significantly would be a huge improvement.

Honestly though I think shaving off an hour or two is worth quite a lot. There are many people who have conditions, like claustrophobia, people with knee and back issues or hell just regular people get uncomfortable when you're flying for hours and hours. My last two flights were both almost 6 hours each way and I was incredibly sore and ready to get off. It's anecdotal, sure, but I don't know a person who doesn't feel the same way.

Anything that improves the quality of life is good and when these types of planes are more ubiquitous the prices will drop and they will become normal. See Concorde Mark 2 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/industry/eng...

eli_gottlieb2• 11 years ago

Even spending two hours in the airport at each end doesn't even equal half the trip if I'm taking a 10-hour flight. And it's only 80% of the trip if I'm taking a 5-hour flight.

masklinn2• 11 years ago

Shaving an hour or two off the flying time

Concorde crossed the atlantic (JFK to Heathrow) in ~3h15 (flying time, excluding ACT delay and the like), a standard subsonic flight takes ~7h.

sandworm1014• 11 years ago

With the increased number of ultra-rich these days, Concorde or another SST is probably more viable then ever. It's certainly less ridiculous than talk of suborbital rocket planes.

The kid in me wants to see Concorde fly as an aircraft, but the working adult would see it as yet another toy for the very rich, undeserving of any special consideration from my ilk. When I see a ferrari drive by I think "cool car" but I certainly would be against any and all tax breaks or special treatment to keep it on the road. Mounting a Concorde on a special platform in the middle of the London Tames seems like a cheap tourist trap.

vermontdevil• 11 years ago

What about electric cars? At this point most of the wealthy get all the tax breaks from owning these cars. And they don't contribute to the upkeep of the roads since no gas tax.

cma• 11 years ago

Money is fungible, through progressive taxation those people (unless they are hedge fund managers who pay lower tax than almost everyone else) heavily contribute to the tax base even if it isn't earmarked for roads to the extent gas is.

toomuchtodo3• 11 years ago

The wealthy paying for expensive electric cars (I'm sure you're insinuating Tesla) are subsidizing the build out of charging infrastructure as well as a manufacturing base for electric vehicles and batteries.

Those tax benefits the wealthy receive are a less risky subsidy than directly giving electric vehicle and charging infrastructure companies funds directly. Its a balance between doing nothing and doing something more drastic (full disclaimer: we aren't doing enough, and we should be pouring buckets of money into electrification of mobility, but that's an argument for another thread).

With regards to gas taxes, most people already aren't paying their fair share of gas/road taxes (the US highway trust fund is completely broke). I'm not sure electric vehicles are contributing to the problem as much as the existing 253 million internal combustion vehicles already on the road (not counting heavy trucks, that contribute even more to road damage).

lmm• 11 years ago

Road wear is proportional to the fourth power of axle weight. It's the lorries that should be paying for road upkeep; the amount of wear from cars is negligible.

usrusr• 11 years ago

Worse yet, the plane on display would not even "fly" as a cheap tourist trap. The Concorde may be a fascination symbol of stagnation, the absolute peak of the lighting fast development during the first half-dozen decades of aviation, a snapshot from just before progress suddenly stopped to be anything else than "same thing, just maybe a little cheaper". This is all very exciting for aviation geeks and people who like to think a lot about the younger history of technology, but those won't fill a restaurant. People who have never used the Concorde just don't have the level of nostalgia for it as some of those few that have.

trhway• 11 years ago

It's certainly less ridiculous than talk of suborbital rocket planes.

as far as in understand the X-15 is more simple than Concorde. The suborbital and ICBM-ballistic tech is well understood and has been in constant use for half a century, where is Mach 3+ aircraft territory is still almost no-go zone. Compare to high Mach the suborbital/ballistic is just more energy efficient.

sandworm1014• 11 years ago

Yes, but you aren't going to see wealthy people (generally older) going through the astronaut training, tying in with 5-point harnesses, climbing into a vertically-mounted fuselage, then pulling 3+Gs on "takeoff" followed by several vomit-filled minutes of weightlessness before reversing the entire process.

Imagine the chaos of a dozen members of the general public experiencing zero gravity for the first time. Better bring lots of towels ... and an umbrella.

david-given2• 11 years ago

It's very easy to dramatically underestimate the amount of fuel needed for an effective suborbital trajectory. If you want to travel half-way round the world, then delta-V wise, you're not very far off actually getting into orbit.

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1118/1

That article quotes 7km/s for a 10,000km trip, compared to about 8km/s for LEO.

The X-15 (and SpaceshipOne, for that matter) was never trying to actually go anywhere; it just hopped out of the atmosphere and come down again very close to where it took off, with a delta-V of about 1.5km/s.

It's worth getting a copy of KSP and actually trying this. It's eye-opening.

dunmalg• 11 years ago

Actually, I suspect the internet has all but killed the real value of the Concorde.The only thing it had to offer was NY-London in 3.5 hours instead of 7.5 hours. There are so few cases where those 4 hours make any difference, particularly with the advances in telepresence, that there's just no real market for the service. The seats are all technically First Class, but First Class in a Concorde was really not that much better than coach in a subsonic aircraft. Personally, I'd take an 8 hour flight in a 747 with a seat that lays flat rather than pay the same price for a leather coach seat for 4 hours.

tdicola2• 11 years ago

Sure but to the ultra rich the Concorde lets them wake up and decide they want to eat dinner at the best restaurant in London that night, then fly back home to party all night in NYC.

ghaff2• 11 years ago

747 seats didn't lay flat at the time but, to your basic point, the real market for the Concorde--such as it was--was the international lawyer who had to jet over to London for the day. And it was relatively cramped compared to first class on a 747 and certainly compared to today's wide bodies. I'm not sure how much the Internet has to do with it as the Concorde never really did have a market but probably the "need" for 4 hour trips to New York or London have declined in any case.

brc6• 11 years ago

That's like saying a Rolls Royce with chauffer is essentially the same as a town car.

They both do the same job in the same amount of time, arguably both are as comfortable as each other (or near enough as makes no difference).

The concorde has enormous brand appeal and exclusivity, and that matters to people.

ubernostrum• 11 years ago

Concorde itself is a non-starter. The companies which know how to make the parts for it don't want to make the parts, and the agencies which would have to give regulatory approval for it to fly won't give the approval (especially without the parts).

If someone cracks the economic difficulties of supersonic passenger flight, maybe some other aircraft could do it. But Concorde is going to remain a museum piece.

a8da6b0c91d• 11 years ago

The kid in me wants to see Concorde fly as an aircraft

Maybe once or twice. After that it was super annoying. It would set off car alarms it was so loud.

bradleyjg• 11 years ago

Put some consumption taxes in place and not only do I not begrudge the ultra rich their toys, I'm happy to bend the rules a little bit to enable it.

For example, want to waive the height restrictions so you can have airplane view so of Manhattan from your $100M penthouse? Sure, no problem. Want to pay the same property taxes as a $3 million apartment? That's a horse of a different color.

brc6• 11 years ago

Why deny rich people their spending? Do you wish that exclusive art be denied from rich people? Exclusive property?

What's wrong with some tax breaks for old classic cars to keep them on the road? They're part of the modern design language and aesthetic and just as important as any important architecture. If you see road/fuel taxes as a cost of using the public road network then providing lower taxes to vehicles who barely drive 500 miles in a year is hardly a burden given the benefit that seeing old classic cars brings to people. Besides, the majority of people driving old cars (even old ferraris) are not mega wealthy but people on more regular incomes who are dedicated to their hobby.

Putting any type of barrier in front of wealthy people spending on this type of technology is a net lose for us all. A private SST would not be built by exploiting workers or robbing pension funds.

As for cheap Tourist traps - London is crawling with them already, including the London Eye and the battleship in WW2 camo.

gaius2• 11 years ago

The kid in me wants to see Concorde fly as an aircraft, but the working adult would see it as yet another toy for the very rich, undeserving of any special consideration from my ilk.

Did you ever hear the term "jet set" used to describe the glamorous social elite, well that term comes from the days when international air travel was the exclusive preserve of the super rich. Nowadays you can jump on a plane for less than the cost of a meal at the airport (+ taxes of course). Small-minded attitudes like yours would have kept us living in caves because people in mud huts were the "undeserving rich".

andreasvc2• 11 years ago

Small-minded attitudes like yours would have kept us living in caves because people in mud huts were the "undeserving rich".

Not having such cheap flights might ultimately have been for the better. Flying has become very cheap, but we're not paying the true cost in terms of environmental damage.

superuser23• 11 years ago

As far as international air travel, I've never seen a flight from the US to Europe for less than $1,000. That's a damn expensive airport meal.

Short-haul commuter flights are a different thing entirely.

acheron• 11 years ago

(accidentally downvoted you, sorry.)

idlewords3• 11 years ago

For anyone with a few hours to spare geeking out about Concorde, I recommend this thread:

http://www.pprune.org/tech-log/423988-concorde-question.html

It starts off slow with a technical question, but gradually pulls in some of the plane's designers (and even a flight attendant) discussing every aspect of the plane's design and operation. One of the most amazing aviation threads on the Internet.

yitchelle• 11 years ago

It was fascinating to see the prototype drawings on the wing designs on this thread, plus many other design aspects of the Concorde. Thanks for sharing.

disillusioned• 11 years ago

This is totally fascinating. This is one of those pure examples of how great the internet can be. Thanks for sharing.

xvf33• 11 years ago

I just "lost" a few hours reading that thread. Thanks!

billiam• 11 years ago

A sign of our imminent extinction, no doubt. Let's double down on JP-4! Party like its 1989, or til the seas are flooding the runway!

swehner• 11 years ago

Something called global warming? What I understood, this is quite a wasteful machine.

Implicated• 11 years ago

Global warming? I think not. Fuel costs, sure.

andreasvc2• 11 years ago

All manner of transportation and industry is contributing to global warming. Unfortunately, that is typically not an important factor in these kinds of decisions.

userbinator• 11 years ago

Interesting trivia: the maximum external dimension of the Concorde's fuselage is 3.32m, whereas the overall diameter of the GE90-115B, the engine used on some 777s, is 3.429m. It's a very narrow plane.

privong• 11 years ago

For another point of reference, the max cabin width of a Boeing 737 is 3.53m and the fuselage width is 3.76m[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737#Specifications

brc6• 11 years ago

So you could fit a Concorde fuselage inside a 737? wow.

dankohn1• 11 years ago

I flew Concorde right after it came back into service in late 2001, right after the crash. Highlights were feeling the heat on the windows and seeing the curvature of the Earth. Downsides were tight seats, and the fact that it didn't save that much time vs. a conventional jet. But, it was amazing, and I still wear my Concorde cufflinks. It still seems complete uneconomic.

PhasmaFelis• 11 years ago

It's really weird to see a frequent fliers' club come together and open their wallets with the sort of dollar values normally seen at, say, alumni events for a major university, or perhaps a charity fundraiser for an ongoing natural disaster.

Then again, when one reads things like "A particularly extravagant excursion was a one-day visit to the pyramids in Cairo in 1982; priced at £780, it was marketed as the most expensive day trip in the world," and ponders the sort of mindset where "most expensive in the world" is considered a marketing point, F. Scott Fitzgerald does come to mind: "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me."

grecy• 11 years ago

"To see the future, go to a museum and look at the Concord" - Jeremy Clarkson

cstross• 11 years ago

Supersonic commercial passenger travel is almost certainly dead for the foreseeable future. (Small supersonic bizjets are another issue entirely.) Here's why:

To start with, Concorde was a high-maintenance airframe, more like a military aircraft than an airliner. Each airliner averaged about a day of maintenance in the hangar per two hours of flight, so made one return trans-Atlantic crossing per week. It also burned roughly 100 tons of fuel shipping 100 passengers between NYC and London in 3h30m, compared to a 747 burning the same amount of fuel to ship 450 passengers between London and San Francisco; about 5-10x the fuel burn per passenger-mile.

But the reason it eventually tanked in the market ...

Suppose you're flying London-NYC, post-9/11. You can queue up for security checks 2 hours before you take your seat, then either fly on a regular subsonic airliner or Concorde. After your flight you spend 1 hour getting through immigration and customs at JFK. Total time on security/queueing: about 3 hours. Total time in flight: 3h30m or 7h. So Concorde only cuts your end-to-end travel time from 10h to 6h30m.

Note that a Concorde seat is a cramped, narrow coach-class seat. Okay, there's first-class food and drink and a buffet in the departure lounge: but it's still coach-class leg-room. Meanwhile, a first class seat on a 747 gets you a lie-flat bed along with your posh nosh ...

But if you have the money to fly Concorde, you have the money to pay for a seat on a private bizjet or a charter service like Netjets. It's still subsonic, but you by-pass the entire check-in/security/boarding/immigration/customs mess. Just drive through a gate and up to your bizjet, board it, and it takes off when you're ready for it, not vice versa. And on arrival, an immigration officer comes out to meet you and stamp your passport (if you pay extra -- part of the service). Travel time: 7h.

The takeaway is that the super-rich/first class jet-set passengers deserted Concorde because they could get the same travel time for the same money on private business jets, without being treated like cattle by the TSA.

Even if you could wave a magic wand and streamline the queueing/bureacracy for Concorde passengers, there remains the fact that if you re-started services tomorrow they'd only be able to manage one flight in each direction per day (if they had a fleet of six hulls magically preserved and ready to fly). Whereas the bizjet is ready to fly whenever the passenger wants it.

Upshot: mass supersonic jet travel is dead for the time being. A market may exist for supersonic bizjets (and indeed Aerion claim to be bringing a Mach 1.5 bizjet to market within the next 5 years -- but someone or other has been saying some variation on this theme since about 1990). The only way we'll see supersonic passenger airliners the size of or larger than Concorde again is if we get a propulsion technology breakthrough that makes it feasible to run a scheduled daily-or-more-frequent service across distances that make it desirable -- LAX to Tokyo or Beijing, London to Sydney, and so on. Nuclear, anyone?

VeejayRampay• 11 years ago

The French and the English built the Concorde in the late 60's and the French also built the HST known as "TGV" in the early 70's, a train that to this day (with newer iterations) holds speed records for a conventional train (proof that the initial design was excellent). After all this, people still like to joke about how the French are "not good engineers".

maus42• 11 years ago

Well, usually people who are saying that are thinking about the everyday results of French engineering, like the electronics of Renaults and Citroens.

bambax• 11 years ago

the club is aiming to purchase a Concorde currently stationed near Orly Airport in Paris

Here it is on Street View: https://www.google.fr/maps/@48.715764,2.3727748,3a,75y,274.5...

and here's a picture I took of it a year ago: http://imgur.com/UtD294i

It doesn't appear to be in great shape.

The Revival of Concorde

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