4 ms·

Isn't the real killer of supersonic commercial flights the inefficiency? You're using ~5x more fuel to have a flight that's ~2x faster. I suppose you can recoup

• p_l 4y ago
  The myth of Concorde's inefficiency is pervasive, but Concorde was reasonably fuel efficient and generally brought a lot of income at least to British Airways. It's engines were efficient enough that it supercruised at Ma 2.0, something only matched by few models of Tu-144 (there were multiple with different engines, not all of them supercruising), combined with high altitude it could use many efficiencies not available to other airliners. Ultimately it was maintenance issues (which in turn were caused by corporate political fights) and 9/11 (which required expensive modifications) that killed Concorde, not fuel costs - all combined with BA finding out that they could well enough replace the super-profitable Concorde routes with other aircraft and still make a bank even if individual tickets had to be made cheaper.
  • abigail95 4y ago
    Yes you can sell Concorde tickets at profit, probably, but you can make more profit selling premium cabin seats on an A350, even if you fix the maintenance costs. Although I will say if you reengineered Concorde with 2020s tech, maybe it would close the gap. Maybe instead of "inefficiency" the better argument is opportunity cost. Hardly anyone flies pax 747s anymore, and I wonder how long Emirates will keep its A380s going.