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

Shame

[mejh]

Damn. Considering it came out in 1977, and nothing has come out to replace it yet.

Shame.

Re:Shame

[prisonernumber7]

Actually, the Concorde's first test flight has been in 1969.

Where are the Concorde replacements?

[operagost]

It's truly sad that the industry cannot come up with a better supersonic (or even near-Mach) commercial aircraft. Instead, they seem to be obsessed with cranking out either bigger, more luxurious craft, or sardine cans like the 757 where as many people are crammed in as possible without enough overhead space for your carry-on. To me, the best flight is the one I can get off as soon as possible. If I wanted to take my time and enjoy the trip, I'd take the train. Coupling these slow air barges with the ever lengthening delays and poor customer service is the reason why the big carriers are losing business to Southwest. Southwest has the best rates and they don't pretend to coddle you, or offer more comfortable seats and preferential treatment for outrageous prices.

No big surprise, all gas hogs are getting grounded

[Brento]

Check with any of the big airlines - for example, Continental just finished retiring its prop planes at Continental Express because they weren't fuel-efficient. Flying is all about lower costs these days, not glamour. After all, do you think unions at United and other airlines would even consider pay cuts otherwise?

Re:It's a 30 year old design

[Organic_Info]

Yeah but it's a testament to good design that it has lasted this long and not been replaced (economic factors withstanding).

Essentially the design has fullfilled its function for a loooooong time. Imagine the improvements that can be made.

The BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk) has some good info.

Re:It's a 30 year old design

[Zocalo]

And what's age of design got to do with anything? Take the the B52 bomber, that first flew in 1955, twenty years before Concorde, and is expected to remain in service for perhaps another thirty years. That's an active service life of nearly seventy years! Sometimes you just hit on a design that gets almost everything so right the cost of replacing it just doesn't justify the benefits that would be gained.

Unreplaced

[WebfishUK]

The mothballing of Concorde represents an relatively unusual situation. In terms of flight time Concorde represents the most advanced way to travel. No aircraft built since, not even military, can sustain a mach 2 flight speed for over 3 hours. Yet this aircraft is to be decommissioned. Can anyone think of a parallel situation in the computing field?. Where an outdated technology is made redundant, yet whose performance has not be exceeded.

Return On Investment (ROI)

[Anonymous Coward]

Regardless of whether anyone really knows of this term, the concept is basically understood by most who pay bills and buy consumer items. Flying has largely been a luxury for many as judged by their tolerance of prices and the current economy. It is shameful how high the price is in the year 2003 simply to fly 500 miles. If this was the 1930's then yes I could see the expense much like in any immature industry. Maturing of the industry should lower prices due to more efficient practices and technological innovations. Yet proportionally it has not really done so over the decades. If not for systems like Priceline.com then it would cost around 300 dollars to travel from one major airport on the East Coast to an area in the MidWest like DFW. This of course is if you schedule the flight months in advance. If for whatever reason you need to travel within 10 days or so then you should raise the range to 500 - 1000 dollars. This is all coach class, I've never bothered with first class... I don't see why you would pay more for eating with silverware, glasses and real plates. To each their own, I suppose.

Next you factor in the time it takes to travel. It would seem that more and more the time to prepare and wait for the flight plus waiting on the plane, and the plane waiting on various taxyways you begin to approach or surpass the actual flight time with the exception of intercontinental flights (or coast to coast in the US). Now we see that some are recommending that you arrive at the airport 3 hours before a flight. Hmmm, I think I will drive. Take the bus? Well I suppose I could except those are notorious for being uncomfortable... but cheap rules that out so horray for bus travel. Some say, take the train. Haha, what a joke Amtrak is. They just can't seem to figure out that if you must pay the same or more than a flight but yet be more restricted on location and take MUCH longer then I am doubting many will view that as worthwhile. Trains have been in operation how long now?

Re:Long time to wait

[Organic_Info]

The very expensive ticket prices somewhat caps your potential market and in the current economic climate makes them somewhat unnecessary.

The current fall in international flights is not going to convince the manufactures that a replacement is worth chasing any time soon.

Remember Supersonic flight changes the rules for design, manufacture and materials - all more costly. Supersonic flight puts mush more stress on the craft and is also subject to a change in physics (relative to subsonic speed..no flames please). IIRC the cross section of a supersonic body has to change within a given constant...hence why Supersonic jets look similar. Supersonic speed does not lend its self well to providing lots of space within the craft/plane - once again not very cost effective for ferrying people or goods over the globe.
.

Claustrophobia

[panurge]

After visiting the Concord(e) at Duxford Air Museum, I decided there was no way I could ever fly in the thing. Even on the ground, I got claustrophobia. I don't mind really small planes, even sailplanes, but somehow the idea of Mach 2 in a sardine can was just too much. And then one of the sardine cans crashed.

Sadly, it isn't a superior technology. It's noisy, uneconomic and not very safe.

And, actually, we are seeing something similar in other fields. For a long time we had no speed limits, then a mixture of road deaths, increasing traffic, and the 70s fuel crisis brought them in just about everywhere. Now we expect cars to be comfortable, safe, economical (even SUVs are actually more economical than midsize cars of 30 years ago) and to provide us with in-vehicle entertainment that we can hear above engine noise. Most of the journeys I do are now slower than they were 10 years ago, but actually less stressful. That's progress.

Also, improved network technology has made many journeys less urgent. Twenty years ago it took me 3 days just to set up an international telephone call in Mexico. Ten years ago in Brazil I had to dial an international number an average of 200 times to get through. When Concord was designed, a 2 hour phone call from London to NY probably cost as much as a round air trip. Fax machines were a joke. And a portable telephone occupied the entire car trunk.
Now, you could videoconference several people all day for less than the cost of a round trip between the UK and the US.

So I'd say, Concord has actually been wiped out by progress. It's just that, as usual, progress came from a different direction from what people expected.