Concorde the queen of the skies

Being the fastest and the safest plane in the world didnt stop air france and british airways from getting rid of it. But was that necessary? It is true that its engines consume a lot of fuel and there are also reports about cracks in the wings. But couldnt there have been a new upgraded version of the concorde with new engines and better airframe?

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[edit on 20-3-2005 by pantha]

The concord is beutiful, with a troubled past. I would love to see it come back.

The reason concord eventually went away however was the fact that for most of it's life it didn't turn a profit, it simply did not make money. Why? I've forgotton. But there is a great NOVA episode it on. Or something on PBS anyways.

Was a great bid, but aircraft industry killed it, in particular Gulfstream.

No longer did the rich and famous have to pony large bills to sit in a cramped cabin, on limited routes - they bought or leased or flexjeted their way around the globe in the lap of luxury and as sat and com technology progressed, the time in the bird was much less important....

it's such a shame.. but In My Opinion it shows that is was way way way ahead of it's time... even by todays standards..theres no passenger plane more advanced.. The fact it wasn't making enough money nowadays shows that it's still to ahead of its time.. maybe in 30-40 years time they'll be a regular thing..but for now..subsonic is all there is.

[edit on 20-3-2005 by clashrock]

The major reasons the aircraft were withdrawn from service was because Rolls Royce had refused to extend a contract to produce spare parts for the Olympus engines on the Concorde and that the airframes were about to hit a major service cycle requirement.

Upgrading the aircraft with new engines is financially unviable, as they would have to be custom built for concorde and currently noone does engines of the type required - military engines wouldnt suffice because they arent large enough, and civilian engines dont have the oomph required.

Originally posted by RichardPrice
The major reasons the aircraft were withdrawn from service was because Rolls Royce had refused to extend a contract to produce spare parts for the Olympus engines on the Concorde and that the airframes were about to hit a major service cycle requirement.

Upgrading the aircraft with new engines is financially unviable, as they would have to be custom built for concorde and currently noone does engines of the type required - military engines wouldnt suffice because they arent large enough, and civilian engines dont have the oomph required.

The same Olympus engines are used to power the Uk carriers (without the reheat) so there were still spare parts available!

[edit on 20-3-2005 by paperplane_uk]

Originally posted by paperplane_uk

The same Olympus engines are used to power the Uk carriers (without the reheat) so there were still spare parts available!

[edit on 20-3-2005 by paperplane_uk]

The Olympus Marine engine is very different from the Olympus 593 engine that powers Concorde, and as such most parts do not work across the ranges. Anyway, this isnt a case of 'there werent spare parts' it was a case of 'Rolls Royce refused to continue to supply new parts' so that doesnt mean that RR cancelled production across the board, the MoD is probably willing to pay prices that BA isnt.

Just one note. Concorde is not safest plane. It was the safest plane until the crash, after that it became (statistically) the most dangerous commercial plane!

Originally posted by longbow
Just one note. Concorde is not safest plane. It was the safest plane until the crash, after that it became (statistically) the most dangerous commercial plane!

Theres a nice book called 'Lying with statistics' that is very interesting. Statistics can be made to show anything - its just unfortunate that its flight hours were so low

Originally posted by cownosecat
The reason concord eventually went away however was the fact that for most of it's life it didn't turn a profit, it simply did not make money. Why? I've forgotton. But there is a great NOVA episode it on. Or something on PBS anyways.

I think it WAS able to make profit. While it is true that it uses 4.75 times more fuel per passenger than 747, remeber that most of the clients were buisnesman able to pay the tickets. I read an article about it that the fuel consumption costs were not such big problem as people thinks. Plus it was able to make twice more money per certain time (because it was at least 2 times faster than subsonic aircraft).

Originally posted by RichardPrice
Theres a nice book called 'Lying with statistics' that is very interesting. Statistics can be made to show anything - its just unfortunate that its flight hours were so low

That's true, one crash doesn't say nothing about the plane safety. It's poor statistics, but still it is statistic...

However I still wonder why they never decided to build something like"Concorde B" . Not much inovation was necessary, just solid nose instead of moveable to save weight, more advanced (lighter) materials and new more fuel efficent engines. The airframe could remain the same.

Perhaps they will make a plane losely based on it...maybe more fuel efficient...

Originally posted by GrOuNd_ZeRo
Perhaps they will make a plane losely based on it...maybe more fuel efficient...

I think there are some eco restrictions in EU - that the new aircrats must be more fuel efficient (have lower emisions). I don't know, but if they will compare superonic planes to subsonic bye-bye supersonic travel.

I would like to see some modern supersonic passenger aircraft. It would have to look nice and have some safety thing to stop engines catching fire.

I suppose every masterpiece finds it's way into the museum eventually.

*sniff*

*Wipes an eye*

Damn grit from the cockpit floor, it gets in your eyes.

I posted this before on an obscure thread... but I don't think anyone picked up on it... so I'd still like to know if others heard that there was a superior US-made plane on the drawing board ?

Originally posted by Moley
I saw some jind of UK History TV program a couple of years ago that talked about Concorde flying at Mach 2, and they said that the US naturally wanted something better (fair enough).

The point is, the program said that one of the US airlines had a prototype of an equivalent plane that could fly at Mach 3 but someone very high up in the airline (or maybe the US government) said "no way, it's got to be twice as fast as Concorde , i.e. Mach 4, or we won't do it at all"

Anyone else heard of this ? It just seems remarkable (or at least not very well known) that the US could have had a plane 50% faster than Concorde but decided not to to bother.

Its not quite right. The Boeing 733 (later becoming the Boeing 2707), was a mach 3 airliner that was to dwarf concorde and carry 250-300 passengers. It was however never built, only a paper project that gained an urgent momentum in the US as a result of Pan Am signing an order for Concordes (Ooh,the shame of it! ).

Originally designed with variable sweep wings that merged with the tailplane to form a huge delta wing for supersonic cruising, the weight and complexity of this arrangement led to it being redesigned as a tailed delta. It was a hugely advanced design that may or may not have worked, we will never know, but of course that doesn't detract in any way from the technical acheivement of putting 14 Concordes into airline service for 26 years, just 'designing' something better is easy by comparison don't you think?

Thanks for that (the info on the Boing 733) and you're probably correct, it's just that I thought one of the reasons why Mach 4 was unachievable was because of the extreme cost of the heat-resistant metals that would have been required for the airframe of a relatively large civilian supersonic plane.

My point is, could that have been determined purely on a drawing board?

To be honest I've never heard of the target being mach 4 before, the Boeing was to be mach 3 but even that was just an arbitary figure that was deliberately set to be higher than Concordes mach cruising speed (tsk, these Americans eh ).

In the event it was costs that killed the project, just look at how expensive Concorde was to develop and Boeing set targets that would have been MUCH harder, that and the 1973 fuel crisis which sent fuel costs through the roof and led to Concorde shedding ALL its orders bar the two that had no choice in the matter, Concorde had actually clocked up quite a lot of orders up until the fuel crisis really kicked in which is often forgotten these days and was of course the reason Boeing wanted to beat it.