Flight 4590 Didn't Kill the Concorde; Costs Did

pigrabbitbear writes "If the plane were around today — which some still fantasize about — it'd be like powering a stretch Hummer with dolphin blood. The airlines couldn't sell enough tickets on the small plane to even make up for the amount of fuel it needed to guzzle on its journeys, let alone cover maintenance for the technological marvel. (A Concorde's taxi to the end of a runway used as much fuel as a 737's flight from London to Amsterdam.) Customers were fine with ordinary travel times for a fraction of the airfare and the plane only took transatlantic journeys, because going over land was too disturbing. Too much noise."

Old news day?

[Antony T Curtis]

Really? How is this news?

Old tech, poor efficiency

[Guspaz]

The Concorde was designed in the late 1950s. We have made rather substantial improvements in technology in the past half century that would allow an aircraft designed today to achieve substantially better fuel efficiency, not to mention the additional efficiencies we can gain via higher altitudes. The stigma of its failure will probably prevent anybody from trying again any time soon, but just because an aircraft designed in the 1950s wasn't cost effective doesn't mean an aircraft designed in the 2010s couldn't be.

Re:Stretch Hummer powered by Dolphin Blood...

[Anonymous Coward]

not gonna lie, id ride in it.

Re:Oh Boeing...

[Anonymous Coward]

It didn't travel at supersonic speeds at 1000 feet. At cruising hight (when a Concorde is doing Mach 2.04) you can't hear it on the ground, because it's too damn far away.

Re:Oh Boeing...

[icebike]

going over land was too disturbing. Too much noise.

Stop that right now. The "Too noisy" meme was started by Boeing to hurt sales of the Concorde, and it worked. You're still repeating it to this day.

A Concorde going overhead at around 1000 feet and normal cruising speed is no more noisy than a normal jet. It's the afterburners that are loud (REALLY VERY LOUD) and those are only used at take-off.

Too noisy was not just a Boeing claim. Early flights were not required to decelerate below mach 1 before reaching land and they sent sonic booms up and down the coast.

Sonic booms cover wide areas. Sitting 40 miles outside of Seattle one day I heard two large booms, and thought it was near by blasting. It turns out it was two F15s scrambling supersonic [kirotv.com] out of Portland when a small plane wandered into Air Force One's exclusion zone. Such booms leave a trail of 911 calls.

Eventually, every single Concorde route required subsonic descents and approaches for this very reason. For the same reason no country let them fly to interior airports except France and Britain.

The afterburners (reheat they called it) were turned off after getting off the runway before they hit the noise abatement zone.
With sufficient runway, they didn't need the afterburners at all except to break through Mach 1.

Re:Oh Boeing...

[Anonymous Coward]

According to TFA, they didn't go to supersonic speeds until after they were over the ocean.

Re:Oh Boeing...

[CAOgdin]

Your ignorance of the flight regimes of the Concorde are astounding. Remember, it flew at Mach 2 (and very quite inside the cabin, as I can confirm as a passenger), and that produces "sonic boom" across the landscape; over water there are few people, so little source of complaints. Sure, the Concorde "is nor more noisy than a normal jet..." only if you consider the XB-70 the exemplar of a "normal jet."

Inaccuracies & another Concorde

[MobyDobie]

The article has all sorts of inaccuracies and key omissions. Concorde was always fuel inefficient and it was recognized as such in the 70s. It was thought it could still be successful despite this, until wide body jets took away much of its market. Because of its limited success, and limited money at the time, a slightly improved concorde (with greater range making a lot more transoceanic routes viable and about another 30 seats), or a vastly improved concorde (with about 250 seats), were never built. These might have been more commercially successful than the concorde that was built. Even so, Concorde was profitable as a niche market for British Airways. It was until it was grounded following the Air France crash. You may recall that BA spent a lot of money improving concorde and getting it back into the air (e.g. kevlar lining in the tanks), but then quickly wound the program down. They expected it to be profitable again, and fly for another 20 or 30 years. The problem was 9/11 killed concorde. The reason was it was such a niche that BA's concorde profits depending on a lot of regular fliers who repeatedly flew on it between London & New York - and many of these frequent Concorde fliers worked in the WTC. The treaty between the UK & France meant that unless both agreed Concorde had to be kept flying, so when BA lost interest the French neither had the prestige reasons or the monetary reasons (I don't know if their Concorde operations were profitable) to continue either, and it was mutually agreed to shutdown. Also omitted are some additional locations where Concorde can be visited. There is a Concorde (one of the two British test aircraft) that you can go aboard at the Imperial War Museum in Duxford near Cambridge. By coincidence I was there today, and yes I went aboard this Concorde.

Re:Oh Boeing...

[Baloroth]

Unfortunately, take-off and landing are the times noise creates the worst impact. Also, I don't think you meant "1000" feet, as a commercial jet does not normally fly that low and certainly wouldn't at supersonic speeds (cruise altitude for the Concorde was closer to 60,000 feet, going supersonic at 1000 feet would be really really stupid: noise, safety, and structural concerns due to higher atmospheric pressure that low would forbid it).

Re:Problem: Speed doesn't really save much time.

[CAOgdin]

Your ignorance of the utility of the Concorde is, like an earlier poster, astounding. From London to New York, I could have meetings in the morning, and meetings the same day, four hours later in New York (4.5 for Dulles/Washington). That improved my productivity and saved many sophisticated business opportunities from running off the rails.

Re:Problem: Speed doesn't really save much time.

[roc97007]

I travel Portland to Sacramento and back once a year. Amtrak station in Portland is a few blocks from work, and the train stops literally in front of my hotel in Sacramento. Convenient, right? Every year I investigate, and every year Amtrak is about three times the cost of a plane ticket, with a journey time around 30 hours vs 43 minutes of flight time. Yeah, go by train...

Re:Oh Boeing...

[magarity]

My parents' house in northern VA was right under a flight path of Dulles. When the Concorde went overhead during takeoff, it wasn't just REALLY VERY LOUD, it was DAMN REALLY VERY LOUD.

737 vs concorde comparison misleading

[dirtyhippie]

Commercial airplanes use tons (literally) of fuel while taxiing. Idling a jet engine is expensive. And london-amsterdam is about the shortest commercially viable flight possible - only about 200 miles - or to put it in US terms, DC-NYC. So, yes, the concorde guzzled fuel - maybe 5 times what a 737 uses - but its fuel usage was not completely irresponsible - after all, you have to carry most of that fuel at mach 2.2...

Re:Oh Boeing...

[nogginthenog]

A Concorde going overhead at around 1000 feet and normal cruising speed is no more noisy than a normal jet. It's the afterburners that are loud (REALLY VERY LOUD) and those are only used at take-off.

I'm sorry but that's wrong. I live in London and you *knew* when Concorde was flying over. But it was damn cool!

Re:Old tech, poor efficiency

[Koreantoast]

It's been tried but no one is interested. In 2001, Boeing pitched the idea of a near-supersonic aircraft that would travel Mach 0.98 with the fuel efficiency similar to existing aircraft at the time. However, airlines balked at it, saying that they were more interested increased fuel efficiency and lower operating costs instead. Therefore, Boeing scrapped the development for their Sonic Cruiser and used the technology to design the B787 Dreamliner instead.

Re:Oh Boeing...

[Obfuscant]

Too noisy was not just a Boeing claim. Early flights were not required to decelerate below mach 1 before reaching land and they sent sonic booms up and down the coast.

Then they stopped doing that and they stopped being "too noisy". Calling them "too noisy" today is incorrect.

Eventually, every single Concorde route required subsonic descents and approaches for this very reason.

Uhhh, more like they required subsonic descents and approaches so they could be handled with normal traffic, and to obey federal law that has been around for a very long time. 250 knots [flightsimaviation.com] below 10,000 feet, and 200 knots below 2500 AGL.

The only exemptions are "approval of the Administrator" (unlikely), and "minimum safe airspeed", which certainly isn't above mach 1 for the SST.

Re:Old tech, poor efficiency

[DesScorp]

The Concorde was designed in the late 1950s. We have made rather substantial improvements in technology in the past half century that would allow an aircraft designed today to achieve substantially better fuel efficiency, not to mention the additional efficiencies we can gain via higher altitudes. The stigma of its failure will probably prevent anybody from trying again any time soon, but just because an aircraft designed in the 1950s wasn't cost effective doesn't mean an aircraft designed in the 2010s couldn't be.

Virtually all of those technological improvements concern lowering costs. None of them increased performance, which is what the Concorde and the proposed American SST projects were all about... zooming civilian passengers around at military speeds. The Concorde was all about speed. We've actually slowed down since then, with the modern high-bypass turbofan airliners... especially the two-engined craft... gaining fuel efficiency but losing speed compared to the first generation of jet airliners with their thirsty-but-fast turbojets.

Here are some cruise speeds of jetliners vs. the later crop of comparable turbofan liners:

Boeing 707: 604 MPH
Douglas DC-8: 596 MPH

vs.

Boeing 767: 567 MPH
Airbus A330: 567 MPH

It's great that our jets are more efficient, but there's zero allure about that when it comes to the passenger. Nobody brags about the efficient fuel usage on their flight. Concorde passengers got to lord it over their friends that they went Mach 2.

Re:Oh Boeing...

[Jeremy Erwin]

You could hear concorde's shockwave from 60 miles. [bbc.co.uk] Given that concorde traveled at 53,000 ft (ten miles) [travelscholar.com], well you do the math.

Re:Seriously?

[El_Oscuro]

If you can make it reasonably pratical, suborbital makes sense for very long range routes (i.e New York to Tokyo). Not only is it much faster, but can potentially use less fuel. Instead of punching a hole in the atmosphere for 20 hours, you need enough fuel for the launch (which would still be a lot) plus a little more for landing. Most of the trip at the edge of space is free.

Re:Wheels

[guppysap13]

A few companies have designed systems being integrated on Airbus and Boeing narrow-body planes in the next few years for testing http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/in-focus-manufacturers-aim-for-electric-taxi-eis-by-2016-368554/ [flightglobal.com]. My guess is that the technology for it was too large/heavy up until recently, so it wasn't worth the fuel waste.

Re:Oh Boeing...

[Jeremy Erwin]

A larger and heavier aircraft must displace more air and create more lift to sustain flight, compared with small, light aircraft. Therefore, they will create sonic booms stronger and louder than those of smaller, lighter aircraft. The larger and heavier the aircraft, the stronger the shock waves will be.

source [nasa.gov]

Moreover,

The Air Force has restrictions in place such that sonic booms be produced over water at altitudes above 30,000 feet whenever possible. When impossible, aircraft may only fly at supersonic speeds in specially designated areas as dictated by the Headquarters of the United States Air Force, Washington, D.C., and the FAA.

source [psu.edu]

Re:Ridiculous

[dhanson865]

Keep in mind the concorde needs a very long runway and operated at only the largest airports were it would have to wait in line and/or travel a long way from loading to takeoff at low speeds which is very inneficient for a jet engine.

Acording to Wikipedia due to jet engines being highly inefficient at low speeds, Concorde burned two tonnes of fuel (almost 2% of the maximum fuel load) taxiing to the runway.

According to http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/5195964.stm [bbc.co.uk] the Concorde burned up 94 tonnes of fuel getting from London to New York and a whopping two tonnes simply taxiing onto the runway.

A random google result says a 737 uses 2400 kg/hour in fuel and 1 hour at 485 mph, 780 km/h should get you about 485 miles / 780 km :)

London to Amsterdam is only 221 miles (356 km) so it looks like Concorde as designed in the 50s used more fuel taxiing around as a common jet does in an hour flight

Re:Oh Boeing...

[Ma'at]

You could hear concorde's shockwave from 60 miles. [bbc.co.uk] Given that concorde traveled at 53,000 ft (ten miles) [travelscholar.com], well you do the math.

I grew up in southern RI, just north of the spot where the Concorde went supersonic. Every day during dinner, all the plates would rattle in the cabinets from the shock wave of the 5:00 flight. At that distance the boom wasn't audible, but there was still enough subsonic energy to shake the house.

Re:Oh Boeing...

[germansausage]

What? The sonic boom is generated by the passing of the shockwave from an aircraft flying overhead at supersonic speed. It doesn't just happen once when the aircraft "breaks the sound barrier". The shockwave is produced as long as the aircraft is flying at supersonic speeds. Everywhere that the trailing shock wave passes over will experience the sonic boom.

TFS is not merely inaccurate, it's dead wrong

[Tastecicles]

Pre-September 11 2001, Concorde almost consistently made operating profit on every flight. The aircraft only had to be half full to break even on all costs, INCLUDING FUEL.

(Source [concordesst.com])

Re:There is a market for Concorde-like aircraft

[cardpuncher]

Well, on the one occasion I flew Concorde JFK-LHR, luxury was not really at the top of the agenda. The *service* was good, but it was also necessary - taking coats from passengers in the private lounge to stow on board gave the impression of service, but was necessary because the aircraft was so small there was nowhere in the passenger cabin where people could have stowed them themselves. The seats were small. The aisle was small. The food selection was small (compared with First Class) because the galleys were small and the food storage areas were small.

There was almost a pioneering air about it - as we climbed out of JFK the captain announced "please don't be alarmed: we're shortly about to turn off the engines [I suspect he meant the afterburners] as part of noise control procedures, but don't worry, they've never failed to reignite yet". The interior walls became noticeably warm as the mach indicator ticked up.

But the big attraction was that Concorde flew during the day (unlike all but a couple of other US/UK flights) and you arrived without the fatigue of 7 hours of confinement in bad air.

And even 35 years back, I got to fly because a conventional aircraft had gone out of service and there was room on Concorde at the last moment to accommodate all the bumped First Class passengers and a good chunk of Business Class - so even then there weren't that many people (the aircraft only had 100 seats) for whom that attraction was worth the price.