Concorde to be Grounded

Goonie writes "This BBC article reports that Concorde flights are to come to an end in October. It may be a noisy and costly anachronism, but it's sad to see the end of perhaps the coolest commercial plane ever to fly." The financial wires carried a story the other day showing how much jet fuel demand has dropped recently.

Comments

Long time to wait

[Organic_Info]

for a replacement. Developing Concord took two government backed companies 13 years (1963-1976?) to develop and put into service.

The process nearly bankrupt both companies and were heavilly bailed out by their respective governments (UK and France). As such I can't see a replacement happening for a long long time. There will have to be some serious incentive (money) for a replacement to be comissioned - until then its a case of what we have will do...

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Re:Shame

[Nighttime]

Boeing have a rather nice alternative ready for production. It's another delta-wing that looks as cool as concorde, and is rated for mach 0.95. It is almost as fast as concorde, but much cheaper to run.

Almost as fast as Concorde? Concorde does Mach 2.2

Re:Shame

[Zocalo]

is rated for mach 0.95. It is almost as fast as concorde

Concorde is capable of at least mach 2.2 and routinely cruises at that speed on trans-atlantic flights, I'd hardly call mach 0.95 "almost as fast" as mach 2.2. More significant to me is that "mass" commercial supersonic travel is coming to an end, albeit for now at least, unless the copied Russian version is still flying.

Still, at least the plane should find itself with a major entry in the history of aviation as the first supersonic passenger plane.

Re:I live......

[boogy nightmare]

For a nice piece of nostaligia

check this

http://www.concordesst.com/history/building/buil di ngfilton.html

bearing in mind directly opposite are the rolls royce factories where plane engines are made :)

S