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My WAG is that won't be a huge issue, given airlines seem to have little difficulty filling existing first class and other premium tiers - but if anyone knows o

My WAG is that won't be a huge issue, given airlines seem to have little difficulty filling existing first class and other premium tiers - but if anyone knows of actual figures, I'd be grateful. The payoff would be the substantially reduced flight time - for some business flyers, that's worth a great deal. Bear in mind, with Concorde, that at least part of its downfall lay in the sharp rise in fuel prices in the early 1970s. Had that steep increase not taken place, but something more gradual, its commercial fate could have been quite different, even if it was never going to be any mass carrier.

notahacker 11y ago
The problem isn't finding people to buy tickets. The problem is finding enough people that want super-expensive transport to repay the costs of an unusually complex airframe and engine development program with virtually no commonality with anything that's been built before. You haven't got an economy class when the premium seats aren't selling with these either, unlike every other airline operation that's ever run a profit, and you've got the risk that if one of these fails due to unanticipated technical issues, the entire programme probably gets junked. Even the time savings don't look that impressive if there's only 1 flight per day, and you can work pretty well in first class on an internet and voice connected modern jumbo. So far the efforts seem to be mostly government subsidised, which mitigates the commercial viability issues a little. I did a back of an envelope calculation once that suggested the UK government underwrote Concorde's development to the tune of $2000 per passenger per flight in today's dollars, and that was an aircraft with a relatively high degree of overlap with existing technology