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In a bid to save America's transatlantic and transpacific airline industry, the US banned the Concorde from flying over the mainland because of "noise concerns"
by DocTomoe 8y ago
In a bid to save America's transatlantic and transpacific airline industry, the US banned the Concorde from flying over the mainland because of "noise concerns".
I feel like Europe should return the favor should this ever result in an airliner.
- Reason077 8y agoNoise “concerns” were very much genuine with the Concorde. An incredible achievement of technology and engineering, but an environmental disaster.
- sschueller 8y agoWhat about all the military aircraft?
- Someone1234 8y agoMilitary aircraft are highly restricted from going supersonic over populated areas too[0]. We live near a US Air Force base, we had a single sonic boom last year and the base put out a tweet/statement apologizing, and the pilot got written up. During national security incidents like 9/11 all bets are off. [0] https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/44759/do-usaf-fighter-jets-go-supersonic-over-land https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/44759/do-usaf-f...
- WalterBright 8y agoWhen I was a kid in the 60s, sonic booms were regular from the AF. I always enjoyed them.
- dx034 8y agoMost countries have restrictions on when/where military planes are allowed to fly supersonic. If they have to cross the sound barrier over populated area (happened over southern Germany last year), this always causes a lot of publicity and can even result in shattered windows (which the military will pay for).
- mrec 8y agoThe Russian Tu-144 knockoff was even worse. I've seen the passenger experience memorably described as "so loud you couldn't hear the person next to you screaming".
- mabbo 8y agoI couldn't resist learning more about this. > Passengers seated next to each other could have a conversation only with difficulty, and those seated two seats apart could not hear each other even when screaming and had to pass hand-written notes instead. Noise in the back of the aircraft was unbearable. Alexei Tupolev acknowledged the problem to foreign passengers and promised to fix it, but never had the means to do so. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-144 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-144
- garmaine 8y agoWtf? The noise concerns were legitimate, and started in the UK, not America. Know your history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Concorde_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Concorde_Project
- DocTomoe 8y agoYes, the first loonies were in the UK. Still, the Concorde operated out of Britain for four decades, and noone died.
- baxtr 8y agoTrue, no one dies because of high noise levels. Still, there is a spectrum of quality between good life and death, and it’s worth fighting for.
- cma 8y agoThe noise pollution was an unpriced externality. The passengers were freeriding on everyone on the ground's peace of mind.
- buserror 8y agoInstead, today, we got 3 times more flights, with lumbering planes that refuse to climb to their altitude to save fuel (and get the pilot a bonus) and instead of having ONE concorde a day and having to deal with it, there's a plane every 20 seconds. That all of these planes freeride everyone without 30 miles with their noise pollution. And all of it mostly for people who could use skype, like I do. PS: I live 15 miles from heathrow, I use to gently swear once daily about the concorde, now I swear every time I step out of the house.
- x3n0ph3n3 8y agoYour math doesn't make any sense. How is a single Concorde flight supposed to replace a day of other planes arriving every 20 seconds?