Just as the question states:

Why didn't BA and AF ever install this popular amenity on their flagship supersonic airliners?

Two basisc reasons:
1) The passengers who could afford to use Bignose didn't care about watcing telly while they were crossing the pond in 3 hours.
2) Weight of the system.

the idea was never considered viable when the plane was first being built. also, it would probably cost a lot to implement it now.

Who wants to watch TV, when your on Concorde????

Simon

Weight. Lack of point.

To make up for it, there is a CD-quality audio system, with some luxuriously padded BA-branded Sennheiser headphones. On reflection, I should have pinched a pair, but that would have been very naughty!

The only thing in this vien that I can think would enhance the experience would be a 15" CD / FALO / FALT), South Africa">LCD above the Marilakes, showing the airshow system. But most of the route's over water anyway........

PTV's were not even heard of in the 60's, plus Concorde's flight time is just over 3 hours, just enough time to enjoy your salmon, caviar and champaigne.

During a flight on Concorde - the first 30 minutes or so is taken up with takeoff and drinks. The next 30 minutes by appetisers, the next hour by a rather nice meal, the next 30 minutes by some rather nice Brandy's and its time to pack up for landing.

Why go to a rather nice restaurant and watch TV ?

RickB

Lack of space, wrong market, short flight times, watching the phenomenal climb and acceleration on the marilake displays on acceleration and the opposite on deceleration.
When the pax was mostly business they were either mostly eating/drinking or buried in their work or FT/Wall Street Journals.
Now they are mostly doing more eating/drinking and being photographed with the displays reading for example 'Mach 2, 1350 mph, 58000 feet, -50-60 deg.c (outside air temp)'.
The dark sky and Earth's curvature is a more interesting sight than anything a PTV could ever offer.
PTVs are boredom killers, Concorde was not boring to start with.

it would probably cost a lot to implement it now.

That should be very useful now. It's like painting a car and drive it to the junk yard.

Believe it or not, Boeing mocked up the 2707 cabin with PTVs in 1966, and in Y no less. They used small 4" color CRTs mounted on seatbacks, as LCD technology was far more primitive back then. The entertainment system in the mockup was fully functional and displayed the exterior camera views or promotional videos.





The mockup's cabin was intended more as a set of concept demonstrations than a typical airline interior, and other parts of the cabin had retractable CRT monitors mounted overhead, so whether production SSTs would have had PTVs is unknown. What value this system had on an airliner whose maximum flight time was four hours, I don't know. The weight problem would have been significant, but it's interesting that this concept came up so far ahead of its time.

--B2707SST

What is it with this fasination with PTV's. I mean I can understand it with 14 hour flights to NRT, but 3-4hr flights??? God forbid you be on a DC3 across country with your Colonel Sanders for a meal service and no video.. =)

Thats amazing. 2707? what a/c is that, or were the pics above staged?

Tommy767:

The Boeing 2707 was the USA's response to Concorde and the TU-144. Serious design work on an American SST began in the early 1960s, and in 1963, just hours after Pan Am committed to six Concordes, President Kennedy committed the country to "immediately commence a new program in partnership with private industry to develop at the earliest possible date the prototype of a commercially successful supersonic transport superior to that being built in any other country in the world."

The result was a three-year competition between Boeing, which favored a swing-wing SST, and Lockheed's double-delta L-2000. Both aircraft cruised at Mach 2.7 (1,800 mph). Boeing's design could hold 300 pax in two classes with two aisles; Lockheed's was a narrowbody seating about 250. In December 1966, Boeing's design was selected for production, with deliveries expected in late 1974. However, the program ran into escalating technical and political obstacles and was cancelled by Congress in 1971, just as prototype assembly was getting underway.

Both companies produced huge full-scale mockups of their aircraft. Boeing's was located in the Developmental Center in Seattle, and even had moving variable-sweep wings with flaps, a droop nose, and the interior mentioned above.







Lockheed L-2000:





--B2707SST

Why does the picture of L2000 remind me of the Concorde? Must be the French flag on its tail...

how successful do you think those planes would have been had they been made comercially available?

VS340,

Sadly, I would have to say they would have to be failures like the Concorde was.

While the Concorde is certainly the most awe-inspiring aircraft to the public, it was a commercial failure with only 14 sold and it would have been no different for the 2707 or L-2000.

The public doesn't like something radically different. That's why Boeing's Sonic Cruiser also did not recieve much fame and popularity. It's too "different" for the public to accept. They'll be glad to watch it, but they wouldn't want to fly in it.

Of course, by "public" I'm talking about the average person. Of course there will always be people who will want to fly on any aircraft the can get on.

The world was filled with aviation geeks like us, the Concorde, 2707, and L-2000 would have been successful.  

Regards

The possible success of the 2707 is a very complex question. If the original variable-sweep 2707-100 version (shown above) had been built on schedule, I think it could have done fairly well. Per-seat operating costs were projected to be much lower than Concorde and even lower than the 707-320B on a typical mission. However, these projections were based on the low jet fuel prices in the 1960s; after the oil crises, I'm not sure any SST would have been viable. The early 1970s were tough for the aviation market, and Boeing could have run into serious cash-flow problems during production startup. Noise and environmental problems were shockingly exaggerated by the environmental movement and probably could have been resolved by the time production began.

As the design process continued, Boeing faced stability and control problems on the -100, which led to substantial airframe strengthening and spiraling weight problems. It eventually abandoned the swing wing for a L-2000-style double-delta wing, calling this version the 2707-300. It had significantly poorer performance than the -100, including lower payload and shorter range, and I doubt it would have been very successful. I am not as familiar with the L-2000, but given Lockheed's management problems with the C-5 and L-1011, I'm not sure it would have done well either.

If I had to guess, I'd the 2707-100 would have sold a fair number of frames (maybe 50-100). I don't think the -300 would have been much more successful than Concorde. I do think the -300 prototypes should have been finished, given the enormous amount of money poured into the program that was basically thrown away at cancellation. The US spent as much on our SST as Britain did on Concorde, and we got nothing to show for it but two plywood mockups.

--B2707SST

"The Boeing 2707 was the USA's response to Concorde and the TU-144. Serious design work on an American SST began in the early 1960s, and in 1963, just hours after Pan Am committed to six Concordes"

Pan Am had concordes??

Pan Am was one of the so-called "Troika" of the first three airlines to order Concorde (the others were, of course, Air France and BOAC). Pan Am had some input into the design process, and Pan Am evaluation pilots flew Concorde several times. All airlines except Air France and British Airways (formed by the merger of BEA and BOAC) dropped their Concorde options in 1973. Total SST orders are as follows:

AIRLINE       Concorde    B2707

Aer Lingus       -          2

Air Canada       4          6

Air France       8          6

Air India        2          2

Airlift Int.     -          1

Alitalia         -          6

American         6          6

BOAC             8          6

Braniff          3          2

Canadian Pac.    -          3

Continental      3          3

Delta            -          3

Eastern          6          6

El Al            -          2

Iberia           -          3

JAL              3          5

KLM              -          6

Lufthansa        3          3

Middle East      2          -

Northwest        -          6

Pakistan Int.    -          2

Pan American     8          15

Qantas           4          6

Sabena           2          -

Trans-Am.        -          1

TWA              6          12

United           6          6

World            -          3

               -----      -----

TOTALS          74         122

--B2707SST

[Edited 2003-10-18 08:12:22]

Ultimately, we will never know BA, so we can't really say if a Boeing or Lockheed SST would have failed commercially like Concorde did. If two countries (free world countries anyway, not ignoring the Tu-144, but that design had more problems) had developed SSTs, then their respective governments would have been more likely to embrace the concepts and cut some of the red tape that Concorde encountered later in favor of the all mighty dollar (or pound sterling). Afterall, a US built SST would have resulted in more jobs for the people and another product to export. Concerns over environmental damage from SST noise and sonic booms would have probably been more muted (though still there), so such SSTs potentially could have been employed on more routes then what Concorde ultimately wound up with.

As it happened, certain problems with 2707's design and budget ultimately killed it. Later engineering analysis concluded that the plane could have flown with the swing wing, or passengers, but not both. So the thing went through a major redesign to something that resembled the Lockheed concept more (but with a tailplane and elevators on it) and a second mockup was made before the project was scrapped. Now if Lockheed's design had been selected instead, I'm betting it would have made it into production, but again we shall never know.

The other problem was that by the time the 2707 got close to having metal cut for it, the presidential and congressional administrations had changed from ones that embraced such bold concepts in the 1960s (SSTs, Moon program) to cutting budgets in the 1970s. Usually these days a government official doesn't want to back something unless they see immediate gain while they are still in office, lest they get voted out and their successor/opponent takes credit for it. Kind of hard to do that with a project that takes about 6 to 10 years to get from drawing board to airline service.

So, Concorde became the only plane and orders for it dried up when the US announced their SST effort, but the US SST never materialized. Still, Concorde orders never really rematerialized, probably due to the budget crunches of the early 1970s and the glimpse of things to come in the form of the 747. Add to that, the UK and France were alone in their route proving of Concorde and had to deal with the environmental lobby in the US who blocked Concorde from landing at JFK for the longest time and SSTs as a result were perceived as expensive and political hot potatoes by the time Concorde was ready for service. So, no additional orders and no work done on a proposed longer range Concorde-B with increased fuel and better engines and we are left with the fleet we got. If the US had an SST, chances are that it would have been the more "in" thing to get and the environmental lobby would have been vocal, but that is about all they would have been. Also, with two competing SSTs, you would then have a competitor in the market, thereby lowering unit costs as a result, making it potentially more lucrative to customers wanting to sign big contracts. In a sense, it might have started the Airbus/Boeing war about 5 years earlier with the SSTs being their flagship products.

But, like I said we will never know. It falls to the next generation to come up with the next SST and hopefully one will be flying before I make my unplanned trip to the next level of existence. As for PTVs, Concorde became a trip experience in and of itself, so PTVs were never really part of the equation. If a larger SST were used on Pacific routes, where even at Mach 2.7 the travel could take about 5 to 6 hours, then I could see it. But not for a three hour hop over the Atlantic.

Most Concorde option holders also had options on the 2707, (including BOAC and Air France), think of them both as supersonic 767 and 747 fleets, with one exception, the 2707 as projected did not have significantly more range than Concorde.
The big mistake on the 2707 was going for Mach 2.7, so it would have to built of titanium rather than aluminum like Concorde was, a much more expensive and difficult material to work with.
In the end, having two abortive variants (100/200) wasted too much time and money (90% of which was tax $), by 1971 cost cutting was in vogue, the US space programme was also being gutted at this time.
Had the 2707 not had the swing-wing dead end and been built for Mach 2.0-2.2, it might have been a different story, you'd probably also have seen the Concorde B too, with it's non-reheated engines, more efficient operation at Mach 0.95 and fuel capacity improvements.