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They mentioned Concorde in that list of failures. But while it was a financial failure in of itself, it was probably the precursor to Airbus - a strong collabor
by jemmyw 1y ago
They mentioned Concorde in that list of failures. But while it was a financial failure in of itself, it was probably the precursor to Airbus - a strong collaboration between the UK and France to save their failing airliner businesses. I doubt it was an overall failure.
- rvnx 1y agoIt is like saying that the tunnel that links the France and Great Britain was a failure
- FabHK 1y agoAnd just some context on the technological side: 20 Concordes were built, 1 lost, for a 5% hull loss rate. 386 DC-10 were built, 32 hull losses, for an 8.3% hull loss rate. 561 A300 were built, 25 hull losses, for a 4.4% hull loss rate. 1574 B747 were built, 65 hull losses, for a 4.1% hull loss rate. Now, that's not normalised by "years active", and some hull losses are not attributable to the aircraft at all (e.g. terrorist attacks), but basically the Concorde safety record was on par to jets from that generation (introduced around 1970).
- rbanffy 1y agoThe Concorde numbers are so low the confidence interval is much larger than the others. It could be a freak accident there was only one catastrophic failure. And, mind you, that catastrophic failure was a pretty freakish accident itself.
- FabHK 1y agoIndeed, before that freak accident the Concorde had 0 hull losses. But even with it, it was not out of the ordinary, that's my point.
- rbanffy 1y agoTrue. I "feel" it was well engineered and well operated, and, because of that, it had few catastrophic accidents. But contrast that to the kind of abuse old 737's and A320s need to endure in the hands of less careful operators.