3 ms·

This page has some great stuff in it. Today I think about commercial airlines being so _optimized_ for efficiency in everything, I just can't imagine a US airli

This page has some great stuff in it. Today I think about commercial airlines being so _optimized_ for efficiency in everything, I just can't imagine a US airline flying a Concorde overland at subsonic speeds. Assuming they flew Mach 0.95 then that's about at 25% speedup compared to today's subsonic cruise (0.78, although you might get faster than this if you're a big plane going a long distance, up in the low 0.80s). Also, the ticket prices they quote for that flight: > 1979 Feb – May one way – $154 – $169 /Sept – Oct one way – $194 > 1980 Feb – one way – $227 so more than $900 today to fly one way on a flight that today you can have for $40 one way on a budget carrier! I guess I don't mind the extra hour it takes on a 737 or A321. Although the more fair comparison would be to the competing prices at the time, not today's prices - any ticket was quite a bit more expensive in 1979-80, so that factors in.

araes 3y ago
Only adding, since you obviously get this, yet even with what seem like expensive ticket prices, the Concorde was still a difficult economic proposition. Even if you didn't pay for crew, fuel, airport fees, ground crew, maintenance, ect... The Wikipedia article quotes a slightly different number than the article, yet it still amounts to a $200,000,000 plane (in modern $) with only 100 seats that eats fuel. Even at $900 (modern $) you quote, it would still take 2150 full flights to recoup the roll-away cost without anything else. (Interweb says base 737 is $90 million (modern $) with ~160 seats.) And then there's the factor of 30x development program costs to consider (bathed in by Britain/France). The expected 350 orders, got 100, built 20. The decade extended development hell. The huge fuel cost jump on release. The Concorde is neat, it's just Murphy's Law was all over that plane.

araes 3y ago

Only adding, since you obviously get this, yet even with what seem like expensive ticket prices, the Concorde was still a difficult economic proposition. Even if you didn't pay for crew, fuel, airport fees, ground crew, maintenance, ect... The Wikipedia article quotes a slightly different number than the article, yet it still amounts to a $200,000,000 plane (in modern $) with only 100 seats that eats fuel. Even at $900 (modern $) you quote, it would still take 2150 full flights to recoup the roll-away cost without anything else. (Interweb says base 737 is $90 million (modern $) with ~160 seats.) And then there's the factor of 30x development program costs to consider (bathed in by Britain/France). The expected 350 orders, got 100, built 20. The decade extended development hell. The huge fuel cost jump on release. The Concorde is neat, it's just Murphy's Law was all over that plane.