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Would range have mattered as much to make the Concorde more palatable for airlines and travelers? I have always been under the impression the main reason the Co

Would range have mattered as much to make the Concorde more palatable for airlines and travelers? I have always been under the impression the main reason the Concorde didn't see more commercial success was because the cabin was small. It seems like what was really needed was a design that could hold more passengers.

TylerE 6y ago
It was very successful (if not wildly profitable) for most of it's life. It was a great example of a halo project. Then the Air France crash happened in 2000. That hurt. Then They were brought back into service a bit over a year later, on September 11th, 2001. Talk about bad timing. Even after BA retired them Richard Branson wanted to buy (and operate) the entire fleet.
- valuearb 6y ago
  It was never profitable on an accounting basis. Only if you ignore cost of construction.
  - pmyteh 6y ago
    There's a lovely LRB piece by Francis Spufford that covers (amongst other things) the accounting and procurement shenanigans required to avoid Concorde getting prematurely scrapped in the 80s, after it was clear it was a dead-end: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v24/n11/francis-spufford/love-that-bird https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v24/n11/francis-spufford/lov... [paywall]
cameldrv 6y ago
I don't think that the cabin size per se really made that much difference. Supersonic flight is always going to cost a lot more than subsonic, so you're targeting the segment that wants the speed/prestige of going Mach 2 and is willing to pay. There aren't that many of these people, and they tend to be sensitive to schedule, so you have to run the service fairly often. That means that you either run a small airplane or give away a lot of seats (even with 100 seats, at least towards the end, British Airways was giving free upgrades to Concorde for a large fraction of the seats). I think that today the supersonic airliner market is still quite tough, because first class has gotten so good. For transatlantic, you only save four hours, and you can spend that sleeping fairly comfortably or using your computer with provided power and pretty good Wi-Fi. Where there is more legitimate value is transpacific, where supersonic might shave 10 hours. However, due to the higher fuel burn, there's almost no way to avoid stopping for gas, which erodes the advantage both in time and comfort.
- ghaff 6y ago
  Exactly. Even with modern first/business seating, subsonic trans-Pacific is still a long flight even from the West Coast even if the seating is comfortable and the food is good. But as I recall you need something like 2x the range of the Concorde even to fly a route like SFO-NRT. And, as you say, if you need to fuel up in Anchorage say, you lose a lot of the time advantage.
  - jandrese 6y ago
    Wouldn't a SFO-NRT flight do the layover in Hawaii? That seems much more direct, and in either case you're going to have to build the facilities to support the SST.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      Look at the great circle route. Hawaii is way to the south. (Although Anchorage isn't quite on the way either.) As I recall when my dad was flying to Japan a lot--sometimes on the company plane--there would sometimes be refueling stops in Anchorage though that may have been leaving from Michigan.
  - cameldrv 6y ago
    Yeah, and the problem is that there is a range death spiral, so you can't just scale up the plane. More range needs more fuel, which is more weight, so the efficiency goes down, so you need more fuel... I don't think that supersonic transpacific is really solvable with current technology. You either have to refuel mid-air or go suborbital or use a different fuel.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      And at some point, if you can make 20 or 24 hours of flying comfortable enough and maybe have good enough communication systems, who cares? (OK, there are a few people who want to go back and forth to Japan in the least time possible. But, let's get real. Air Force One isn't a supersonic jet.) It's mostly a case of dialing in the space and price per passenger for the market. Given enough space and entertainment options--hey, live performances in the lounge!, celebrity chefs--very few of us really care that much about getting to a destination 12 hours faster.

TylerE 6y ago

It was very successful (if not wildly profitable) for most of it's life. It was a great example of a halo project. Then the Air France crash happened in 2000. That hurt. Then They were brought back into service a bit over a year later, on September 11th, 2001. Talk about bad timing. Even after BA retired them Richard Branson wanted to buy (and operate) the entire fleet.

valuearb 6y ago
It was never profitable on an accounting basis. Only if you ignore cost of construction.
- pmyteh 6y ago
  There's a lovely LRB piece by Francis Spufford that covers (amongst other things) the accounting and procurement shenanigans required to avoid Concorde getting prematurely scrapped in the 80s, after it was clear it was a dead-end: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v24/n11/francis-spufford/love-that-bird https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v24/n11/francis-spufford/lov... [paywall]

cameldrv 6y ago

I don't think that the cabin size per se really made that much difference. Supersonic flight is always going to cost a lot more than subsonic, so you're targeting the segment that wants the speed/prestige of going Mach 2 and is willing to pay. There aren't that many of these people, and they tend to be sensitive to schedule, so you have to run the service fairly often. That means that you either run a small airplane or give away a lot of seats (even with 100 seats, at least towards the end, British Airways was giving free upgrades to Concorde for a large fraction of the seats). I think that today the supersonic airliner market is still quite tough, because first class has gotten so good. For transatlantic, you only save four hours, and you can spend that sleeping fairly comfortably or using your computer with provided power and pretty good Wi-Fi. Where there is more legitimate value is transpacific, where supersonic might shave 10 hours. However, due to the higher fuel burn, there's almost no way to avoid stopping for gas, which erodes the advantage both in time and comfort.

ghaff 6y ago
Exactly. Even with modern first/business seating, subsonic trans-Pacific is still a long flight even from the West Coast even if the seating is comfortable and the food is good. But as I recall you need something like 2x the range of the Concorde even to fly a route like SFO-NRT. And, as you say, if you need to fuel up in Anchorage say, you lose a lot of the time advantage.
- jandrese 6y ago
  Wouldn't a SFO-NRT flight do the layover in Hawaii? That seems much more direct, and in either case you're going to have to build the facilities to support the SST.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Look at the great circle route. Hawaii is way to the south. (Although Anchorage isn't quite on the way either.) As I recall when my dad was flying to Japan a lot--sometimes on the company plane--there would sometimes be refueling stops in Anchorage though that may have been leaving from Michigan.
- cameldrv 6y ago
  Yeah, and the problem is that there is a range death spiral, so you can't just scale up the plane. More range needs more fuel, which is more weight, so the efficiency goes down, so you need more fuel... I don't think that supersonic transpacific is really solvable with current technology. You either have to refuel mid-air or go suborbital or use a different fuel.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    And at some point, if you can make 20 or 24 hours of flying comfortable enough and maybe have good enough communication systems, who cares? (OK, there are a few people who want to go back and forth to Japan in the least time possible. But, let's get real. Air Force One isn't a supersonic jet.) It's mostly a case of dialing in the space and price per passenger for the market. Given enough space and entertainment options--hey, live performances in the lounge!, celebrity chefs--very few of us really care that much about getting to a destination 12 hours faster.