Wayne Parham Messages: 18793 Registered: January 2001
Illuminati (33rd Degree)
Oh, damn. Another last. I knew that the sonic boom was a problem for flight paths over populated areas. I knew the Concorde was relegated to charter service and that it was alway in danger of becoming extinct. But I guess I hadn't kept up because I didn't realize it was already a goner.
Honestly, I just don't understand why it wasn't setup to fly between coastal cities so that it's path was always above water. Seems a simple solution to me. I've flown the jet stream several times and ten hours in the air is a long time. It would be great to have the standard international routes being supersonic.
I think that it was just too expensive to operate. I, too, hate long overseas flights, but the Concorde ticket was like first class. Thousands of dollars.
Wayne Parham Messages: 18793 Registered: January 2001
Illuminati (33rd Degree)
Yeah, the ticket was about $10K. But I think that was mostly because it was treated like a charter flight. I can't help but think if it had been used more, it would have been able to take advantage of an economy of scale. It may have burned more fuel per minute, but was in the air 25% the time of the subsonics. So I expect it had the potential of being more fuel efficient. And I don't know what maintenance issues there were, but I would think it would also take advantage of economy of scale if it were used enough. Oh well.
Youd think that faster flights,even if just as much fuel is burnt, for 100passengers instead of 400, that the maintenance costs would be similar.. and that the ticket price could be 4x the normal amount due to less passengers / flight..
Perhaps the mere fact that there was only ~7 or so of them, and theres thousands of normal 737s,airbuses etc,causes the per unit price to be high..so hard to recover R & D costs? hence super expensive tickets always..I guess the gov really has to invest into it to cause it to succeed.
There are other supersonic ideas around,and ramjets etc.. :o)
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