hinckley wrote:I'm an av geek and tech geek. I'm also a business person who got to fly a BA Concorde long ago. But the days of businesses investing shareholder capital in something "cool" for the sake of "cool" are long over. And even back in the day, those who think that Concorde had a proven business case are marginally correct at best. BA and AF bought the planes for next to nothing. Had they paid a normal price, they would have lost money. And with the advent of the internet (and a work-from-home pandemic), whatever "success" Concorde had then could never be replicated today.
There's another aspect of supersonic flight that's often ignored . . . Between the eastern US and Europe (arguably the largest long-haul route system), today's aircraft fly at the right speed when you take time zones into consideration. I've flown TATL countless times. I would never waste a day in the air taking a daytime flight. I - and most business people - work all day, fly overnight (sleeping in a modern airline's bed), shower on arrival and get to work the next day. If I fly overnight supersonically, I land in London or Paris in the middle of the night. That doesn't work and that's why BA and AF Concorde flights left JFK very early in the morning and arrived in the late afternoon. That was a day of business lost then and it's the same now. It doesn't matter that you were in the air for 3.5 rather than 6.5 hours. Fwiw, when Boeing cancelled the Sonic Cruiser, the conflict of flight times and time zones was one of the reasons they gave. They said flights would either have to leave or arrive at the wrong times and that wouldn't work for premium-paying customers.
As an 'Av-Geek' you might want to check some basic details about this aircraft, firstly this Branson generated BS (from 2003) that BA paid 'next to nothing' for Concorde, well if 20% more than a 747 in 1972 (when BOAC it's predecessor) ordered their initial 5, is next to nothing, maybe.
True there were a couple of white tails both BA and AF got for next to nothing, though I can say BA then had to spend on making them fit their standard.
Then people say 'well the governments wrote off the development cost', this is true. It is also true that it was far from the only type this can be said about. It depends how you define aid, neither the UK nor France had anything like NACA then NASA to do well funded research, nor an entity like the Pentagon and DARPA do fund even more.
In Concorde's case, when it entered service to pay back some of that money, BA had to give some 80% of any direct operating profits back to the government. This was a drag on the airline, was clearly going to end as BA approached being privatized, so BA took over the support costs in total, paying a final sum to the government and went on to make a great success with the type.
Could have been worse, the US government spent on the abortive B2707 as much as the UK did on Concorde, from the 1962 agreement to build it with France until the residual support ended by the early 80's.
But we got actual aircraft, which while a commercial and in terms of the changing attitudes towards noise etc, political failure, it was a major boost to the technology sectors of both nations, as the list of innovations on Concorde was long. Including partial FBW on an airliner, electronic engine controls, mastering the intake system (which the Soviets requested for their very problematic TU-144, since this was developed by the Guided Weapons Division of British Aircraft Corporation and it was the Cold War, no chance of that).
Maybe best stated by some visitors we had in December 1998, from NASA. They came to see how we maintained support for a small fleet of unique air vehicles long out of production. They regarded Concorde as Britain and France's own Apollo Programme.
The answer to NASA's question? 'With some difficulty', vendors come and go, orders are small and often years apart, they were looking to see how we did it and comparing with their Space Shuttle.
BA001 pushed back from LHR at 10.30, it arrived in JFK around 09.20, so not the late afternoon, I did it more than once and it is quite a thing to set your watch back when you arrive in New York the same day.
This was one of the major selling points to customers, you could do a full day's work in NY and get back the same day on the BA004, or more usually the next day on the BA002 which got back to London in the early afternoon.
Here is a snapshot of BA operations, a common myth is that the aircraft sat around much of the time;
Saturday 17th April 1999, all times local LHR;
BA9044C G-BOAC LHR-CDG (Charter)
BA272 G-BOAB LHR-BGI 09.30
BA001 G-BOAE LHR-JFK 10.30
BA002 G-BOAA JFK-LHR 13.45
BA273 G-BOAB BGI-LHR 15.50
BA002 G-BOAA JFK-LHR 13.45
BA004 G-BOAE JFK-LHR 18.45
BA003 G-BOAD LHR-JFK 19.00
Sunday 18th April 1999
BA001 G-BOAE LHR-JFK 10.30
BA9043C G-BOAC CDG-CDG 13.30
BA002 G-BOAD JFK-LHR 13.45
BA9010C G-BOAG LHR-LHR 14.00
BA004 G-BOAE JFK-LHR 18.45
BA003 G-BOAB LHR-JFK 19.00
BA9045C G-BOAC CDG-LHR 20.20
Between November and April BA ran a largely weekend BGI route, very lucrative and sometimes with additional ones of the Sunday and charters.
Note the charters, BA and AF flew many and varied ones, in BA's case it only amounted to some 10% of revenue but marketing you could not pay for, though some were luxury ones with tour operators, many like the LHR-LHR above allowed many to experience supersonic flight at a fraction of the cost.
To the present, I am shocked to hear the BOOM has 140 employees, are they taking the piss?
Really, without some very major aerospace companies putting very major funding in, count me very dubious.
To those who might think it does not matter, gain some knowledge or grow up.
To the idea that the PR for UA is good enough, congrats, you have identified one of the curses of our age.
The airlines don't care so much if the program is commercially successful for Boom or not, just like they didn't care if the A380 was commercially successful for Airbus. As long as the plane makes money for the airlines, that's all they care.
