Alas, while I have been lucky enough to see Concorde fly, I was never fortunate enough to actually fly IN one. Though when I walked through one at a museum some years ago, I thought that even a 2 hour flight in that cramped, narrow cabin would have been a very uncomfortable experience.
Modern subsonic airliners are now capable of far better speeds and efficiencies. Qantas just commenced one of the (if not THE) longest non stop flights from Perth in Western Aus. to London in 17 hours. I myself flew from Sydney to Houston direct in 15 hours last month. The new generation 787s etc., with their carbon fibre construction enabling them to fly at higher altitudes, combined with efficient, powerful power plants are slicing hours off most long routes.
The last time I flew to London (mid 90's), the Singapore-London leg was 22 hours in a 747. To be able to fly Perth-London in 17 hours is a massive improvement of over 20% reduction in flight time in just a couple of decades.
Personally, I would far rather spend 17 hours in a comfy, wide body aircraft than even 10 in a narrow missile. I do realise that modern SST aircraft may be wider and more comfortable than the Concorde, but there are still physical limits to fuselage cross sections and weights that will limit the comfort factor and size IMO.
While this may be true for you, and for a limited number of others, I strongly suspect this is a case of "what the customer says they want is not the same as what they'll pay for".
While we might like the idea of luxurious travel at a gentle pace, in practice the though process that will happen is:
* I would like to go to Australia
* I have 2 weeks of holiday
* In order to maximise my time in Australia I shall take the fastest travel I can afford
I doubt it was that expensive. I know families who migrated from Europe to the US in the 50s/60s, and I'm pretty sure they didn't have (inflation-adjusted) $1000/person.
It was probably easier to find work on a ship to pay for the trip, at least for able-bodied men.
It would have been nice to be a passenger on an old-style post mail boats, such as http://rms-st-helena.com/. Alas it made its last voyage to St. Helena earlier this year.
Agreed. Plus they seem potentially less dependent on fossil fuels (e.g. producing hydrogen gas is energy-expensive, but it can be done with electricity, whereas airplanes need high-density fuel).
And if it had conference rooms, high-speed internet, a fitness room, and the slower trip helped minimize jet lag... I'd be quite happy with that as well.
Well the main problem with amtrak is that they never get anywhere on time. When you make the train trip itself the vacation though it makes it much more enjoyable. The sights on the california zephyr are fantastic.
> modern subsonic airliners are now capable of far better speeds and efficiencies
No modern subsonic airliner is capable of the speeds that the Concorde flew at.
> I would far rather spend 17 hours in a comfy, wide body aircraft than even 10 in a narrow missile
You must not have flown recently, or have been weathly (or fortunate) enough to not be in the 'economy' class. I'm not even super tall, just over 6ft, but I cannot fit in a standard seat on these 'modern' airliners. I too have been in a Concorde at a museum, and would prefer 10 hours in a sardine can to 17 hours in a sardine can.
tbf, Concorde also took 17 hours to go to Australia, and that was when it was actively bidding to set a speed record, due to the need to divert and refuel unlike today's 787, as well as restrictions on supersonic flight overland. Coolness value of Concorde aside, I'd definitely prefer the business class in the 787.
ETOPS also helps a hell of a lot. In the 70s as a twin-engined craft a 787 would have had to remain within 60mn (single-engine speed) of an airport large enough to accommodate it (or 90 under ICAO rules).
The 787 is certified ETOPS-330, it has to be within 6 hours of single-engine flight of an airport. That means significantly less fucky routes.
Well, be satisfied. You're right! I have flown on Concorde (from London to New York). It was cool to have done it, but as a very tall fellow I'm bound to say that much of my memories are of being quite uncomfortable with the amount of space I had. Smaller than your average Ryanair flight these days.
Thanks for the first hand account! The most notable thing for me when walking through the museum exhibit of Concorde was that I would not stand up straight in the cabin, which would have really made things super uncomfortable for me. One of the things on my 17 hour 787 flight recently was that I could walk to the galley exit area and perform full stretches in all directions every hour. Not being able to do that would have been really bad for my body and for my sense of claustrophobia.
+1 for the airship idea too - I would book a ticket in a flash.
> Qantas just commenced one of the (if not THE) longest non stop flights from Perth in Western Aus. to London in 17 hours. I myself flew from Sydney to Houston direct in 15 hours last month
They flew a 747-400 from Sydney to London direct all the way back in 1989 - things haven't changed that much unfortunately :(.
Except that flight was specifically to set the record for fastest London to Sydney. They waited for specific weather and carried just the crew ie no cargo or passengers. Interesting story none the less http://www.airwaysmuseum.com/Qantas%201st%20England-Aust%20n...
Oh, I'd assumed the Perth->London one was the same sort of deal, but turns out it's an actual route with passengers and food and all. That is pretty impressive.
Yep -- $2500 one-way from New York to London (vs. $420 for a normal flight), to save a bit over 3 hours. As Maciej Ceglowski wrote ( http://idlewords.com/talks/web_design_first_100_years.htm ), current subsonic planes are good enough.
Probably closer to twice as much. Business class flights for returns within a few days are usually around $4000-6000. This will again allow same-day returns and would probably go for closer to $8k-$10k return. Capacity will be extremely limited, there are >1000 business class seats/day just out of Heathrow to JFK.
At $2500 this will own the business class market, assuming 1x1 seating, even if they were just economy seats with business class service. At minimum a corp traveler is going to cost $1-2k/day to put in London or NYC if based in the other city (and probably more, in forgone productivity), so this might shave one or two days off a short trip.
I've flown the 17 hour route from Doha and Auckland several times and prefer it, but I'm lucky to be an easy sleeper. I'll definitely be keen on the Perth-London flight: may I recommend if you do, fly to Perth from the east Australian coast around sunset with a window set. I've never seen such visual magic from a plane before.
They could fly faster (most have max speeds >0.9 mach) but are slower to save fuel. The optimal speed would be slightly lower but as airlines and manufacturers have settled on 0.85 mach for long-haul, introducing a slower plane would mess up schedules and could be seen as a competitive disadvantage.
Dad got to fly it one time. He was on a business trip to France, meeting up with a German colleague for the visit. When he was done and arrived at CDG for the flight home, it turned out that Air France was going on strike and he was going to be stuck in Paris for a few days until everyone went back to work (not the worst place to be stranded...)
But his German colleague, who wasn't so much German as Prussian, felt this was unacceptable and went up to the counter and started yelling at the ticket agent. After 10 minutes of this, the agent shrugged and got dad the last seat on the Concorde (he was watching the clock for when the strike was to start anyway, so what did he care).
Dad was 6'3" (190cm) so it was a tight fit. But he said it was a memorable flight and something he was glad to have gotten the ability to do.
I think I'd want to fly in these at least once, but I'd probably prefer a subsonic aircraft with Ka-band satellite and more comfort (via more space and weight budget) for most flights. NYC to London one-day turnaround would be a killer market for it, but 7h in coach++ vs. 16h in suites-level luxury would probably lead me to prefer the subsonic suite for transpac.
I think it'll aim at business travellers anyway. One-day returns EU-US are one example that will have high demand but there are a lot more profitable routes. London-HKG is currently 12h direct, I bet a lot of companies would pay up significantly to reduce that. The difference with supersonic is close to an 8h workday in each direction.
I wonder what will be different financially this time around, to make SST profitable. Customers are as price conscious as always and the first class crowd is limited, especially so for a higher priced option.
Lighter structural materials (carbon composites instead of metal).
More advanced aerodynamics (less drag, thus less fuel is needed).
And while not directly related to cost, aerodynamic advances have also led to the possibility of nearly eliminating the sonic boom, thus allowing flight over populated areas.
Actually the fuel efficiency of Concorde in "max cruise" auto pilot mode (aka max speed) is way better than people think: it didn't fly with reheat on (that's what is called supercruising in military planes). Reheat (aka afterburners) was applied from Mach 0.95 to 1.7 and for taking off.
The hourly flow rate in supersonic is roughly the same than in subsonic (cruising speed was around Mach 0.9), something like 20 metric tons per hour.
So the faster you went supersonic, the better as your fuel efficiency would increase.
For example, Concorde cruised at Mach 2.05 with its engines giving an SFC of 1.195 lb/(lbf·h) (see below); this is equivalent to an SFC of 0.51 lb/(lbf·h) for an aircraft flying at Mach 0.85, which would be better than even modern engines; the Olympus 593 was the world's most efficient jet engine.[2][3] However, Concorde ultimately has a heavier airframe and, due to being supersonic, is less aerodynamically efficient, i.e., the lift to drag ratio is far lower. In general the total fuel burn of a complete aircraft is of far more importance to the customer.
The overall thermal efficiency of the engine in supersonic cruising flight (supercruise) was about 43%, which at the time was the highest figure recorded for any normal thermodynamic machine.[3]
BA's Concordes were actually profitable once they started making customers pay the price those customers expected to pay: prospective passengers expected prices to be way higher than what they were originally set at, leading to both chronic under-capacity flights and less income. Increasing prices to match expectations made BA profitable.
The other issues were mostly politics/NIMBY.
IIRC the estimated operating costs were about twice a 747 in seat/nmi in the early 70s.
Concorde was very advanced for its time, but it still had things like vacuum tube technology in the avionics bays etc. that would have been supremely expensive to upgrade/replace/repair. Also construction material etc. were good, but have advanced incredibly in the past few decades. Engine technology too.
But there are still physical limitations around size of a supersonic capable airframe and the like, which limits the design of new aircraft and will still keep the price per seat quite high.
However, by far, the biggest limitation that I can foresee is that the aircraft will have to fly non standard routes in order to avoid creating sonic booms over densely populated areas.
New York to London is nowhere near enough to make an aircraft development programme worthwhile, especially not one requiring substantial technological novelty. Demand for high speed business class flights on that route is - based on the last supersonic operator - in the region of one flight per day.
The A380 programme has over 200 aircraft delivered and over 100 more ordered and is not expected to break even.
Engineering is a problem too. Skin heating and reliability are big problems for supersonic speeds. You might get a prototype done, but building a stable fleet will be hard. The first accident will be crippling.
I would really think that environmental concerns would ground a supersonic commercial passenger aircraft, until those problems are overcome - most likely with a breakthrough in technology.
Do you mean the noise, or the energy requirements? The former can be dealt with, I think, or at least greatly limited (and flight paths can be kept to areas tolerant of a bit of noise). The latter can't really a commonly held concern it seems, or we'd already be trying to cut back on the tremendous amount of regular flying that happens every day now.
Yes. Hence no Jetson practical, pervasive flying cars either. For point-to-point bulk transport, it’s more efficient to have dedicated low pressure tunnels with maglev or similar. All that petro burning will look incredibly awful in 50 years, if not now.
Wow, 4500 nautical miles unrefueled. So the US West Coast to Europe and US West Coast to Oceania routes I fly most often might still be better-served by a nonstop flight on a 787 or similar.
In particular, losing the great circle route would be painful on the way to Europe.
Development of that plane is likely profitable even if you'd only use it for EU-US East and US East-West. 3h flights LON-JFK and JFK-LAX/SFO (if supersonic over land is allowed) would create enough demand to justify the cost.
Just London-NYC has >20 direct flights each day, that's more than 1,000 business class passengers. Most of them will already pay >$2,000 per flight (or their companies).
> Development of that plane is likely profitable even if you'd only use it for EU-US East and US East-West. 3h flights LON-JFK and JFK-LAX/SFO (if supersonic over land is allowed)
It won't be, and Concorde's 3h30 flights between JFK and London or Paris were not enough.
> Most of them will already pay >$2,000 per flight (or their companies).
That's cute. Circa 2003 standard round-trip on Concorde was >$10000 (that's around 14k in 2018 USD), discounted "celebration" fares were $7k. For $4k you could do Concorde one way and 747 the other way.
> That's cute. Circa 2003 standard round-trip on Concorde was >$10000 (that's around 14k in 2018 USD), discounted "celebration" fares were $7k. For $4k you could do Concorde one way and 747 the other way.
I'm aware of that, Concorde represented First class, not business class. I was talking about today's prices for business class fares. Ticket prices have come down over the past 1-2 decades, I wouldn't expect the same prices (inflation adjusted) as with the Concorde. But certainly more than business class fares, therefore my reference to current fares.
Regarding profitability, the Concorde was extremely inefficient and very restricted in flight paths. A supersonic jet that is allowed to fly supersonic over land could unlock more profitable routes (e.g. intra-US or EU-Asia), optimising utilisation.
> A supersonic jet that is allowed to fly supersonic over land could unlock more profitable routes
It also won't happen. Especially in the land of NIMBY that is the US. Not only could Concorde not go supersonic over the mainland, it had to slow down to subsonic when crossing FLA between the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico.
That was because the boom was so loud with the Concorde. Fighter jet booms regularly cause property damage. Apparently new designs allow for much quieter supersonic booms which would make it easier to allow those. The US isn't just a country of NIMBY, also of capitalism and lobbying. If enough congressmen get free tickets for intra-US flights, the ban will quickly be lifted ;)
Modern subsonic airliners are now capable of far better speeds and efficiencies. Qantas just commenced one of the (if not THE) longest non stop flights from Perth in Western Aus. to London in 17 hours. I myself flew from Sydney to Houston direct in 15 hours last month. The new generation 787s etc., with their carbon fibre construction enabling them to fly at higher altitudes, combined with efficient, powerful power plants are slicing hours off most long routes.
The last time I flew to London (mid 90's), the Singapore-London leg was 22 hours in a 747. To be able to fly Perth-London in 17 hours is a massive improvement of over 20% reduction in flight time in just a couple of decades.
Personally, I would far rather spend 17 hours in a comfy, wide body aircraft than even 10 in a narrow missile. I do realise that modern SST aircraft may be wider and more comfortable than the Concorde, but there are still physical limits to fuselage cross sections and weights that will limit the comfort factor and size IMO.