What Happened to the Concordes?
airandspace.si.edu
These days, it takes seven hours to fly from New York to London, compared to under three hours flying at twice the speed of sound on the Concorde. When I started my internship at the National Air and Space Museum, I was determined to learn why.

Why didn’t it succeed?

Concorde flights came to a screeching halt after only 27 years of operation on October 24, 2003. The reason? Excessive cost, high fares, and loud noise. On a regular flight, Concordes consumed 6,771 gallons of fuel, which quickly exceeded the profit made from the flight. In addition to that, only a total of 20 Concordes were built and no airline ordered them except for Air France and British Airways, who had to as they were state-run airlines at the time.

Oh, and a 2000 crash that killed everyone on board (109 people) and four people on the ground.

    • sunbrrnslapper@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      2 个月前

      Museum of flight has one you can go it (not just a TIL, but also in a museum!). It is pretty cool and worth checking out if you are in the area.

    • FundMECFS@lemmy.cafeEnglish
      6·
      2 个月前

      Yeah, until they flew over your house. If you think living near an airport is bad these days…. Concorde begs to differ

      • madcaesar@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        2 个月前

        I never understood why they could not just go slow until they got up to cruising altitude and then gun it, wouldn’t that solve the sound problem?

        • Zorque@lemmy.worldEnglish
          6·
          2 个月前

          Weren’t they basically horribly inefficient at slower speeds? That’s how I understand most supersonic craft to be. In order to maximize their efficiency at their intended cruising speed, they sacrifice efficiency at slower speeds. Spend too much time at those lower speeds you end up not having enough fuel to get to your destination.

          • EtherWhack@lemmy.worldEnglish
            5·
            2 个月前

            That may be true, but don’t forget about the aerodynamics. They have smaller, swept wings to lower any drag and to provide the proper lift at cruising speed.

            At slow speeds they likely have the ailerons cranked near maxlift, just to stay aloft. (This likely causes or at least contributes to the fuel inefficiency, due to the increased drag.)

  • Skua@kbin.earth
    64·
    2 个月前

    A fun fact about Concorde: there is one aerial photo of one of them flying at supersonic speeds, and the fighter jet that the photo was taken from could barely keep up long enough to take it. Here’s the pic.

    The image was taken by Adrian Meredith who was flying a Royal Air Force (RAF) Tornado jet during a rendezvous with the Concorde over the Irish Sea in April 1985. Although the Tornado could match Concorde’s cruising speed it could only do so for a matter of minutes due to the enormous rate of fuel consumption. Several attempts were made to take the photo, and eventually the Concorde had to slow down from Mach 2 to Mach 1.5-1.6 so that the Tornado crew could get the shot. The Tornado was stripped of everything to get it up to that speed as long as possible.

    https://theaviationgeekclub.com/heres-the-only-picture-of-concorde-flying-at-supersonic-speed/

      • Skua@kbin.earth
        9·
        2 个月前

        Probably would have had the same problem. Both the Tornado and the F-15 were capable of going fast enough, it’s just going fast enough for an extended period that becomes a problem. The F-15 is a bit faster but needs to carry a bunch of external fuel tanks to match the Tornado’s range. Neither of them is cruising the whole way across the Atlantic at more than mach 2 like Concorde could

      • brucethemoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        2 个月前

        IIRC the only fighters that can supercruise (go supersonic without gushing fuel out of afterburners) are super modern jets like the F22, and still not at Mach 2.

        Some older specialized craft could go Mach 2 efficiently, like blackbird or the XB-70, but they’re all long retired.

        Concorde was realistically the only plane that could do that.

  • Diplomjodler@lemmy.worldEnglish
    53·
    2 个月前

    No post on here has ever made me feel older. Just the thought that somebody might not know about Concorde because it’s so far in the past makes me want to hide in a closet.

  • pelya@lemmy.worldEnglish
    401·
    2 个月前

    Time savings in today’s economics would be completely negated by waiting two hours in line at the airport.

  • chrisbtoo@lemmy.caEnglish
    35·
    2 个月前

    Thanks to Concorde, Phil Collins was able to play at both the London and Philadelphia Live Aid concerts. He Played in London, got a helicopter to Heathrow, Concorde to NY and then another helicopter to Philadelphia.

  • Tetsuo@jlai.luEnglish
    20·
    2 个月前

    My grandpa was a mechanic on one of these. Impressive plane it’s too bad it didn’t work out.

    • jqubed@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      2 个月前

      A guy I worked with put himself through university working ground crew for Braniff at Dulles when they were flying interchange flights taking the Concorde on from Dulles to Dallas-Fort Worth. He commented on how crazy some of the tools were that the mechanics were regularly using while the plane was at the gate.

  • dylanmorgan@slrpnk.netEnglish
    20·
    2 个月前

    I remember fantasizing about flying in that thing when I was a kid. Not because it was a super luxury flight, only because it was supersonic. I was sad the day they mothballed it.

  • rizzothesmall@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    17·
    2 个月前

    I used to have outdoor PE up on a hill near the sea and we would hear the booms from Concorde out over the ocean. Takes me way back. Also makes me feel way old that someone old enough to write this didn’t already know about it lol

    They also occasionally took off and landed at a local airport and we would go and see them sometimes. Noise on takeoff is unimaginable unless you’ve witnessed something like a Typhoon jet. The kind of noise you can feel entirely through your body.

  • PhobosAnomaly@feddit.ukEnglish
    16·
    2 个月前

    I lived under the Heathrow-Noo Yoik flight path, and every evening within a couple of minutes, there’d be a dull thud sound on the roof.

    By that point, the plane has reached a supersonic speed and the sonic boom was striking the ground in a reduced fashion. It just sounded like someone had dropped a bag of sand on the house.

    This was of course back before the days of ADSB tracking.

    • jqubed@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      2 个月前

      They have a demonstrator flying which is honestly farther than I thought they would get. I still have a lot of doubts about the actual viability when all the engine manufacturers told them they could not supply an engine that meets their needs so they decided they would design and build their own engine, too. On the one hand, kudos for not giving up. On the other, how likely is it they’ll be able to do something the rest of the industry says can’t be done, or at least can’t be done economically? But I really hope they’re able to succeed!

  • gramie@lemmy.caEnglish
    91·
    2 个月前

    The former president of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) had a Concorde-capable airport built at his home village, so that his wife could charter it to go shopping in Europe.

    The CIA assassinated his predecessor and put him in power so that he would do their bidding and that of the American mining companies. It’s estimated that he was worth around $6 billion, $30-40 billion in today’s money.

  • Diddlydee@feddit.ukEnglish
    81·
    2 个月前

    To be fair, any passenger plane crashing would usually result in everyone dying.