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.

Shame

[mejh]

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

Shame.

Supersonic Relic

[Anonymous Coward]

Concorde has had its day, Most vital comms can be done over the web/videoconferencing negating the need for fast travel to and from the USA. Most people are interested in cheap flights nowadays, which means packing as many bums on seats as possible. Thats why the 747s of this world are still going and the 100 seat concorde is being scrapped.
Still a shame tho. :(

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:Shame

[Soft]

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.

Sources, please? The only similar concept Boeing had that I knew of was the Sonic Cruiser, which they recently shelved (even before the paper study was completed, I think -- let alone "ready for production").

Oh, and the Concorde flies (flew) at Mach 2. Mach 0.95 is not "almost as fast"...

Another idea based on "Emotion" down the drain

[snatchitup]

Most grand engineering projects go down the toilet because for an instant, a Wallstreet (or Fleet Street) banker listened to the euphoria of an ignorant engineer.

"Nobody has super-sonic service. We'll make a mint!", opined one aeronautic engineer.

The problem is, you need to make a mint 100 times over for the project to pay for itself.

Some other examples: Irridium, American Mobile Satellite, Fed Ex by Satellite, Electric Cars, The Chunnel, The Big Dig (Boston),

Some that will come to bare: Satellite Radio (XM and Serius).

Some honorable mentions: The Space Shuttle.
(It would've been much more cost effective and safer to just keep on sending up rocket modules).

Sorry to be such a pessimist, but this is history.

Cool? I don't think so!

[Aliks]

Call me a troll if you will but . . . . .

Concorde was anything but cool. It was a military jet thinly masquerading as a commercial airliner. If you have ever been anywhere close to the flightpath (Statement of Interest: I hear it blasting past every day)then you'll know that the noise pollution laws had to be specially bent to allow it to fly. Virtually every country banned in the world banned Concorde from their airspace for this reason.

Concorde was an economic disaster, the development costs were landed squarely on the UK and French taxpayer, and operationally the damn thing never made a profit.

It is no surprise that it was one of a kind. Noone else would be so silly as to develop one

Re:Sad but...

[sploxx]

Wouldn't it be rather simple to crash a train?
And the modern trains have also 500 & more people on it.
I mean, there are no security checks etc. for you if you want to go by train. For me, it seems to be an easy target for the terrorists.

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.

Re:Where are the Concorde replacements?

[32041509]

No replacements will be forthcoming until energy is cheaper. Already, an average airliner flying at Mach 0.76 has air over the top of the wing going a relative Mach 1.2. This then slows in the form of a shockwave. Shockwaves absorb a great deal of energy.
Even the best Airbus wings, with isentropic recompression still can't go more than Mach 0.8 without generating wing shocks too big to be uneconomic. Either government pays or we don't have them I suspect.

Re:Another idea based on "Emotion" down the drain

[kinnell]

Most grand engineering projects go down the toilet because for an instant, a Wallstreet (or Fleet Street) banker listened to the euphoria of an ignorant engineer.

Good job, too. If they didn't, we wouldn't have the opportunity to develop all these cool toys. Who would grow up wanting to be an engineer otherwise?

Design is part of it

[dachshund]

The reason it is grounded isn't due to its ancient design, the Concorde still runs fine.

I would suggest that the design and the economics of flying the thing go hand in hand. It has a very small passenger complement, requires extra-long runways and loads of fuel.

A newer design might have solved some of these problems. The Sonic Cruiser, which now looks like it won't ever be built, seated more than twice as many people.

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:Not a big deal

[Dr.Enormous]

"it's also a death trap. Statistically, it took one wreck to send it from the top of the safety list to the bottom."

Which just goes to show that you shouldn't trust small sample sizes (i.e. many fewer flights and passengers than other aircraft) when declaring the Concord a 'death trap'. Just like any thoughtful person wouldn't avoid a small town that happens to have an astronomical murder rate due to one killing...

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.
.

The end is nigh...

[kinnell]

While the picture is bleak for commercial jet fuel demand, the losses for refiners are partially offset by the military's jet fuel consumption

Is it just me, or does this sound like the collapse of civilisation?

Get some new dreams

[kongjie]

Please don't inflate the loss of the Concorde into something it is not. And, if as some have suggested, the space shuttle is next, so what?

Do all our dreams have to focus on big metal thingies that soar up in the sky? It's not like Captain Kirk is explaining how poverty was eliminated on earth in the 21st (?) century. Many of you are romanticizing air travel. There are some people whose dreams consist of three squares a day and a bath.

Personally, I don't think air travel is all that. As someone who for a while took a few trips to Asia each year, I can say that being able to get there in 14 hours devalued the experience. I would have preferred a week on an ocean liner.

And business travel pre-9/11 was totally out of control. It's wasteful and a distraction in many cases.

Re:Long time to wait

[SystematicPsycho]

I posted a link to this in my previous post, but here it is again -

Concorde(sunk-cost) fallacy [skepdic.com]

"When one makes a hopeless investment, one sometimes reasons: I can't stop now, otherwise what I've invested so far will be lost. This is true, of course, but irrelevant to whether one should continue to invest in the project. Everything one has invested is lost regardless. ....

This fallacy is also sometimes referred to as the Concorde fallacy, after the method of funding the supersonic transport jet jointly created by the governments of France and Britain. Despite the fact that the Concorde is beautiful and as safe as any other jet transport, it was very costly to produce and suffered some major marketing problems. There weren't many orders for the plane. Even though it was apparent there was no way this machine would make anybody any money, France and England kept investing deeper and deeper, much to the dismay of taxpayers in both countries."

Re:Concorde never recovered

[turgid]

It's sad, isn't it? It wasn't even a problem with the Concorde that caused the crash, but rather a large lump of scrap metal that fell off the plane that took of just before. Concorde is a magnificent engineering achievement and shows what can be achived outside of pure commercial pressures. That's why government-funded advanced R&D has a place. Commercial R&D will only ever solve short- to meduim-term problems.

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.

Nuclear engines and people trying to stifle them

[chainsaw1]

I have news for you. If we are ever going to make transportation advances, we need fuels with greater energy to weight ratios. If you can think of any fuel that acheives the same amount of energy to the amount of mass used (fuel only, not counting the actual engine) that's also production ready, i'd like to hear it.

People thinking that fallout will land in their yards have stifled innovation of nuclear propulsion (esp. in manned space travel) for a long time. I'm not saying you/they don't have a good arguement, but if we are to move forward as a society we need to at least try.

Yeah we'll probably fuck up somewhere, and we tend to learn only from our mistakes. But like any experimental advance we need to trust that we will try to learn from our mistakes, control the damage, (and yes, it will be greater damage than we may have ever seen as a people) and keep moving on.

Additionally, as we advance, we will have things of even higher enegry-to-mass ratios than nuclear power. You think these will be safer to work with? They have more energy contained in them. As such, they'll be that much more dangerous!

The only thing that can protect us from this danger, really, is distance. And to move out to greater distances takes greater energy. So if we don't use our high energy tools at hand, we'll stagnate as a society and never be able to truly distance ourselves from whatever we impose on ourselves anyway.

(Sorry, this is kinda scatterbrained... hope it makes sense)

Re:"Beautiful Planes": Try the SR-71 Blackbird

[joestar]

In my opinion, the SR-71 is not a beautiful plane at all. Actually I find it quite an horrible plane. Fascinating maybe, impressive certainly, beautiful no. And additionally it was designed as a "death engine" while the concorde is more like a peace-dove. But maybe it's only the vision I get from my "old-European" eyes :->

Wrong.

[LibertineR]

The Air Force gave up on the XP-70, after intellegence reports suggested that the Soviets had developed SAM's that could possibly shoot it down at altitude, and were also developing the MIG-25 to intercept it. The XP-70 had an operational celing of 82,000 feet, easily reachable by the MIG. Now, the Air-Force was wrong on both counts, but didnt know so at the time. The crash had nothing to do with the decision.

Also, the XB-70 only crashed because an F-104 chase place got caught in it's wake turbulance and collided with the Valkyrie, snapping off one of it's vertical stabilizers, and damaging the other one. The resulting crash was blamed on the F-104 pilot. Now, I happen to think that the B-1 is the most beautiful airplane ever built.