I thought Concorde was retired because one of them crashed, making the public question their safety...

Every person in the media who reports on Concorde and civil supersonic aviation in general should see this graph. What’s dooms supersonic airline flights is not (directly) the laws of physics; it’s the laws of economics.

Flying at supersonic speeds uses exponentially more fuel, whether it was Concorde in the past or vapor ware proposals such as Boom in the future. This means dramatically higher operating costs, which, in turn, results in dramatically higher fares that are just not worth it for 99.9% of the flying public. And that is never going to change.

Given the choice between flying NYC-London for $1000 in 6.5 hours versus $2500 in 3.5 hours, 99+% of people will choose the first option each and every time.

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Not only that, but the faster you want to make an aircraft move through the air, the more precise your engineering needs to be. Precision engineering at those levels is pretty much insanity. It's why the Blackbird was so technologically incredible but also such a maintenance and engineering headache. One small thing that goes wrong at such a high velocity and that's it. The whole thing can shred to bits from small unintentional vibration. It makes travelling that quickly not worth the risk for public use.

Yep.

I wish we could start to tackle the non-flight times associated with flying instead. Boarding/de boarding, sitting on the tarmac, having to show up 2 hours early, etc. To take a 45 minute flight, it’s four hours from when I enter one airport and leave the other airport.

So why is the 747 going out of production?

Sources: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde (Wikipedia, citing various airline specification documents)

Tool: Tableau; Photoshop

Agree. But it’s often hard to embrace the message of “yeah, this is pretty much as good as it’s ever gonna get.” Not exactly an uplifting message the media might like to sell or that people want to hear. Especially in aviation, where the gains over the past 100 years have been mind-blowing (though in fact most of those gains occurred between 1903 and, say, 1973).

Since the 70s commercial aviation flying technology has mostly been about better safety and fuel efficiency. The first time I flew to Europe was on a 747 in the early 70’s. Now, some 50 years later, the typical economy class passenger experience is pretty much the same (if not worse).

Economics. Short haul flights prefer a smaller aircraft. Longer haul flights prefer a larger.

It’s use to be the long hauler of choice - but now there is a better option.

Have they not also cancelled the A380?

Yes. That was different economics of production costs vs operational costs.

That Airbus A380 sure looks good in comparison to everything else.

The Concord was decommissioned because the fleet was aging and the maintenance costs were rising - including the fact that they got only a flew flights out of the landing gear before the tires had to be replaced.

The Concord crash lead to a lot of stories about the aging fleet and difficulty in getting them properly maintained and serviced, including cannibalization of already dcommissioned planes for working parts, that the customers of the Concord flights lost their trust and started booking slower flights.

It had nothing to do with fuel prices

This IS what happened. It was never intended to be the plane for the average person, it was the method of travel for the wealthy who could afford it.

When the Concord crashed news stories fan about how they were having to cannibalize decommissioned planes for working parts and how the aginging fleet was requiring more and more maintenance just to keep it aloft. The stories made it seem like we ahould expect the Concord to crash more often than there were successful flights. There was even a documentary I remember that went into the fact that the tires only lasted a few landings because how hard the plane landed.

After the stories the very wealthy who were taking Concord flights started taking private or First Class regular flights instead so it was decommissioned.

People who are looking at taking a 45 minute flight for $5000 or a 3 hour private plane for (then) $12000 - $15000 didn't give a crap about price of fuel

So will the new supersonic planes get closer to the curve? I guess not by much. ‘Though if made in US they won’t be handicapped by regulations to ensure they cannot thrive (which is what US did to a foreign offering), unless the EU decides to reciprocate.

747 is less cost efficient per ASM than modern ETOPS aircraft.

Yes closer, but not nearly enough to be even close to parity w subsonic aircraft. The efficiency of the A350, A320neo, and 787 are remarkable. Even the next-gen A330neo promises to be significantly more efficient.

It does, but the costs of a 4 engine bird and the huge n of seats makes it a challenge for airlines to make the yields hit the mark. There just aren’t many markets where the A380 can consistently make financial sense for airlines that aren’t state subsidized.

A380 is a great airplane, but the economics of it just don’t work in most cases. It was built with the thought that airlines at major slot-restricted airports would need bigger aircraft to move the meat, but markets responded by offering more nonstop flights using smaller aircraft that avoid slot-restricted airports.

Do I look like Fred Boeing? What the heck is ETOPS?

This is done if the most interesting conversation I've seen in a long time. No lie. Keep it up folks 😁

ETOPS is a certification that allows twin-engine planes fly routes where the nearest airport is 60 minutes or more away (e.g. transatlantic routes).

They basically have to show that it is extremely unlikely that both engines would fail at the same time.

The chart may be accurate but the conclusion is not and should be removed. Concorde was profitable for both BA and Air France. It was more profitable and in higher demand once retirement was announced. Virgin tried to buy them but for whatever reason was denied.

The real issue was it was getting old and during financial hard times around 2000 and post 9/11 Airbus effectively stopped making replacement parts.

What was needed were new airframes and a successor but that never materialized for a host of reasons in the aviation industry. But clearly there is a market for a new version, especially in the pacific operations zone.

It would be more useful, and more interesting, if the points were colour coded according to the date the planes entered service. One would expect that much of the apparent variation around the trend line could be due to some planes being of newer designs than others.

There isn't even now... one of the new players can't find a manufacturer to make them engines.

I’m not sure why Boom was ever going that route honestly with Rolls. I would think they could use F-35 derivative engines potentially.

I remember reading an article about the demise of the Concorde, and this was only partially the answer.

The Air France Concorde crash demostrated just how keenly the Concorde stayed aloft.

I can't remember the exact specifics, but a Boeing 747 with 3 failed engines could still make something like 200km. The Concorde, with one of its engines failing sank from the sky like a stone.

Unsurprisingly, this did not make people nearly as excited about travelling on a Concorde.

The Concorde was profitable to operate, but that’s at least partially because the airlines did not pay a realistic price for the airframe.

They didn’t pay development costs but one could largely say that for many airframes including the A380. It’s airframe dev costs were subsidized as well.

In Concordes case it also didn’t get sold to as many customers who initially wanted it or even throughout its life. Not sure if it was British or French govt who limited its sales.

Apparently nobody wants there business...

They didn't just not pay the development costs, BA bought the program from the UK government for pennies on the dollar (pound, I guess).

Not entirely true. It was in service for 27 years.

I agree 100% with the fact it used a lot of fuel, but the laws of economics mean it shouldn't have been in service for more than a year or so. It was popular enough to fly thousands in luxury for decades at a massive cost. It's the 1% that paid the ridiculous fares.

There's also a market for hypercars which make more power than a Formula 1 car from the eighties, and are stupidly inefficient and crazy expensive. The kicker is they almost never get used in anger (and if they do, usually end up in a ditch).

Not everything comes down to dollars and sense :)

Not sure what RR is doing they have dropped out of a lot of high profile projects recently. Some of which clearly have economic value. They must be streamlining operations or something internally / gearing up for other markets.

Sense. That part.

Doesn’t change the fact the plane was profitable. If some company goes bust and I buy their assets at a discount and make a working business model- it’s still profitable.

In this case how realistic was it to think a commercial plane designed and built like a multi national fighter was going to come in on cost and on budget? Has that ever happened in a large scale govt aviation project?

The point was the graph concludes it’s not profitable because of fuel consumption which is not true.

>Given the choice between flying NYC-London for $1000 in 6.5 hours versus $2500 in 3.5 hours, 99+% of people will choose the first option each and every time.

Two counterarguments apply here:

-This may not hold true for very long routes, like LA to Tokyo and other trans-Pacific routes. Not spending 11+ hours stuck in an airplane is certainly a luxury many would pay a premium for.

Concorde could not fly such routes as it lacked the range, mostly due to its fuel inefficiency, which brings me to the second point:

-Those new proposals promise much higher fuel efficiency than Concorde. Granted, it's still nowhere near regular subsonic airliners, but still far below the figure shown in the plot above.

Does this mean they'll be successful? No, absolutely not. There are still major technical challenges they need to solve, and even if they do, it is unclear the aforementioned gains compared to Concorde will be sufficient to make them commercially viable.

Overall, I believe they are still more likely to fail than succeed.

But it is certainly not a guarantee.

Takes a lot of money to build the engines, get them approved by the a/c manufacturer and the FAA, make and sell spare parts, etc.

There is also a power-by-the-hour concept in the industry... so you have to own the hardware to lease it out.

Yeah it’s strange because the F-135 from Pratt seems like the beginning of the ideal engine here.

The Concorde was given — for free — to BA and AF by the consortium (BAC and Aérospatiale) of government-backed companies that built it.

And this was back when both of those airlines were majority owned by their respective national governments (they were later privatized).

The plane was built by government-backed companies with huge government subsides and then given to airlines which at that time were subsidized by the taxpayers. That’s how they could “make it work”

Fair, the operations were profitable regardless of how it came to be that way, but that doesn't say much looking forward. If any of the companies claiming to be working on a new SST actually produce and sell one in meaningful quantities, I will eat my hat (right after I buy one).

Ha ha. Sounds good.

The concord was for time, not price or fuel efficiency. Almost all air travel is for cost. The concord was for business people who were tired of making that long ass flight. Some people are so well off that time is more valuable than money.

The 787 is capable of long distance flight and doesn't require special airport gates for boarding.

There was also the problem of accessibility. The A380 is a HUGE airplane that demanded a lot of ground support. Airports had to modify their runways, taxiways and gates to accommodate the monster. That severely limited the number of destinations the aircraft could visit.

Then there's the problem that it's very difficult to fill up such a huge plane on lesser popular routes. It's much better to use multiple smaller medium to long haul aircraft that can land at any medium sized airport and fit perfectly at the gate, greatly increasing the number of destinations and departures available to flying passengers.

The A380 was conceived at a time when huge aircraft were still very popular, but the market and technology had both changed by the time the plane was put into service.

Except they never raised the ticket prices enough to actually do this. That’s what the words at the top of the graph say.

Graph is misleading. It doesn’t start at 0 which normally wouldn’t be an issue for similar graphs, but the main focus is how much less efficient Concorde is. For this purpose the graph gives the false impression of 10x more fuel compared to a similar capacity traditional jet. However it is closer to 4x more fuel. This is because visually going from the graph’s starting point of 1.5 to 2 makes the 0.5 above the starting point give the impression that the starting point is 0.5. Therefore the concord’s consumption of 13 appears like a higher multiple of consumption than it actually is.

The same goes for passenger count. That doesn’t start at 0 which gives the false impression that the jet carried fewer passengers than it actually did.

Laws of physics also doom it to some extent. Almost no country will allow them to fly supersonic over land due to the loud sonic boom, so you’re very limited to what kind of routes you can fly. There’s progress in aerodynamics that will reduce it but it probably won’t make it to any commercial supersonic jets for a long while.

I got to return from Paris on it once. I’m grateful to have experienced it.

Supersonic flight- if you have to ask how much it costs, you can’t afford it.

Yup. And also: trans-pac supersonic flight is especially tough because hauling that much fuel over such a long distance (versus TATL routes) poses its own physical challenges.

My guess is most people who would be interested in it already have private jets.

Bravo, really well done. I never knew this. I wonder what it would look like as kg of fuel per passenger Km? I think it'd stand it even more

Fill the Concorde with Japanese people and the Airbus A380 with Americans and you'll see a ⬆️⬇️ in the fuel efficiency lol.

✏️ v 🍐

You might not think it matters, but in all seriousness though, the average weight of the passengers on an aircraft, especially one that can hold half of a thousand at 500-800 passengers, the difference in weight between 500 avg Japanese people and 500 avg Americans could be... extremely catastrophic, at 20,000-40,000 pounds difference, enough to sink an airship if it was full of fuel, luggage, and people.

Several us airlines had orders for Concorde during development. Boeing were also developing a supersonic airliner. Before Concorde‘s maiden flights the US passed laws prohibiting supersonic flight over land, funnily enough around the time that Boeing gave up on their supersonic airliner (but that’s one for the tin foil hat crew). US airlines cancelled their orders because their main routes for the Concorde were going to be between the east and west coasts. I believe that the price per aircraft ballooned as well.

The Concord lasted for 27 years because of government subsidies. Without it, it would not have lasted 27 days.

The plane did not score one single sale. Not a single unit was sold to an airline anywhere.

Even the Soviets realized that the idea of a SST was madness and canned their TU-144 in less than a year of use.

This graph on it's own is alright, but putting a big claim in the title and the top is just jumping to conclusions. Even if fuel inefficiency was a factor, it wasn't the only factor.

All of this data would've been known far before a Concorde ever flew, they were very aware. If it was so blatantly uneconomical, they never would've built them. It wasn't trying to compete with those massive jetliners, it was a plane for the rich and famous. A large amount of passengers isn't necessary when each passenger is playing 2-3x as much for their ticket.

If you actually want to talk about why it was decommissioned, you need to look at a lot more information. How much service they required later on in life, their setbacks from being unable to fly over land due to concerns about the sonic boom, and most importantly the publicized crash of a Concorde. To pin it all on a single statistic is ludicrous.

I worked for Virgin once and was invited to Richard Branson's home thorugh some sort of event mixing all the Virgin companies.

He said he'd spoken to a pilot for Virgin Atlantic who said it's a shame the Space shuttle things he was building couldn't be pointed at America instead - IE, bring back a version of concorde.

Guess it hasn't materialised as this was nigh on 10 years ago now.

There’s one very large flaw in the chart’s caption.

Factoring out government taxes and fees, ticket prices are largely a function of supply and demand rather than fuel cost, contrary to what the chart suggests.

The actual fuel burn and passenger loads contribute significantly to profitability and absolutely shape business decisions… but ticket prices remain highly detached from that component.

A somewhat simplified but relevant example is how non-stop fares are often higher than connecting options, with airlines understanding that passengers will pay a premium over the alternative, even if it costs less fuel to carry that passenger.

Actually, if I’m going to nitpick more… in English, the plane was typically referred to in the aviation industry as just “Concorde” without “the”, also contrary to what this chart suggests.

Maybe it's just an impression, but didn't air travel become much more affordable over the last 20 years? I remember when I was a kid, going to Japan or Thailand was a whole endeavour, you saved for it for years, it was the adventure of a lifetime, now it feels like any reasonably affluent middle-class couple can afford it without much fuss...

Yes, there are more airlines doing flights more efficiently. The default package is about the same with a few corners cut. Planes are bigger and there's more routes to choose from, but the price of a ticket hasn't changed a lot.

Flights like LA to Chicago haven't changed price, but flights like LA to Osaka have. In other words domestic flights cost about the same after inflation, but international flights are now almost as cheap as domestic.

You can read a bit more here; the efficiency and selection are vastly different from the 40s.

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How to lie with statistics.

They cancelled the program be ause of crashes, not because of cost.

What I cannot explain to my satisfaction is why airfare here in Europe is so much cheaper than back in the US. For example, I excluded LCCs because of their nickle-and-dime add-on fees and compared legacies, non-stop, coach, round trip, daytime departures of roughly the same distance. MEM-DEN United 872 nm, €616; MAD-DUB Iberia 902 nm, €133.

That is a ridiculous difference for essentially the same flight. Fortunately I'm taking the less expensive flight next month.

When you are reading a graph, you are expected to read, the range is written right there on the axis. The range is always fitted to data, there is no requirement for starting from some arbitrary value, zero or otherwise.

>99+% of people will choose the first option each and every time.

No they don't. Most will, sure, but there are plenty of people willing to pay premium as evidenced by existence of business class. Concorde didn't die to fuel costs, plenty of passengers willing to pay that.

But that fireball takeoff from Paris, plus 9/11 and maintenance costs for such a small fleet... that's what killed Concorde.

I don't agree with this at all. If you are going to make such a comparison, you should be reading the numbers of the axes, making your point moot.

If anything, OP's title is misleading. This chart just says that tickets on the concord should cost 6x more than a normal flight. Some people could be willing to pay that much due to the faster travel time or whatever. So it really doesn't bring us to the conclusion OP mentions in the title.

Graphs are a form of communication, and it is a communicators job to try and limit the potential for major misunderstandings just as much as it is the responsibility of those who receive a communication to try and interpret it accurately.

Separately, no choice of range for data is agnostic/default, so choosing to fit the data in a way that excludes zero when excluding zero distorts the graphs meaning is a form of misrepresentation on the graph makers part, even if it was not a conscious or malicious decision. “The range is always fitted to data” is not an excuse for a misleading design.

>Boeing gave up on their supersonic airliner (but that’s one for the tin foil hat crew)

No foil needed. Development of the Boeing SST was funded in large part by the US government. The government killed the funding so Boeing killed the project.

Covid seems to have reversed this and air fares are crazy expensive. Hopefully this is a short term problem while the supply side is sorted out. What do y'all think?

Yes, there are unquestionably premium pax who will pay for J (biz class). Airlines love these pax. But the same fuel cost dynamics apply to J as they do to Y (economy). So any J seat in a supersonic will need to have exponentially higher pricing due to exponentially higher costs (which is why Concorde fares on BA were much higher than F fares on subsonic aircraft).

Since Concorde cost the airline nothing to buy (the plane was given to the airline for free), BA was able to make Concorde operationally profitable for a while based on the amount of demand for ultra-premium service on the London-NYC route and some charter business. But the singular nature of the NYC-London market (the province of exclusive bankers, lawyers, and media stars) makes that route unique in the world. AF never really made money flying the Concorde on its regular Paris-NY service.

And not long after the AF crash, the Concordes in operation were facing upcoming D Checks due to the total n of hours in service. A regulatory-mandated D check involves a total dismantling of the airplane for inspections of the airframe. Given the enormous cost of a D check, in most instances airplanes reach the end of their operational life at that point. No way did it make financial sense to do this. Concorde’s days were effectively over.

Yes, definitely more affordable now.

Different market dynamics. And just looking at cost/distance doesn’t work well. Many short haul flights in the US are crazy expensive because of supply and demand (regional service on UA out of DEN or ORD is a good example).

Also: in Europe, the LCCs have to compete w railways — not so in the US, where airlines largely don’t compete w Amtrak (except in the Acela corridor).

Competition, supply/demand, AND distance (which is a cost function) all impact pricing. And of these three factors, distance is often the least significant variable in the model. Example: the ASM costs in the NYC-LA market are higher than, say, Denver to Billings, MT. But the amount of competition and demand/supply in these two markets varies dramatically, and therefore there are often cheaper fares to fly 2,475 nm from NY to LA than 455 nm from Denver to Billings.

Well, yes, this is now a factor too. When Concorde was developed there were no biz jets that could do TATL or Trans-pac. Now there are Gulfstream and Bombardier planes that can do these routes. So if I’m a Fortune 100 CEO or a billionaire, I can choose to fly commercial and maybe get there a little faster if there’s a supersonic option but endure all the hassles and limitations of commercial aviation -OR- I can take a G700 and have a much, much more pleasurable experience (and bring along my wife/lover...and friend or clients...and the family pet. And it’s wheels up exactly when I command).

TU-144 was a fascinating project. It was mostly about PR — there was no financial need whatsoever for supersonic civil aviation in communist states. But the Kremlin felt they needed to keep up appearances w the technologically advancing west. So they commissioned Tupolev (one of two government owned airplane makers, the other being Ilyushin, though I think they ended up using some Ilyushin people) to create a Concorde competitor to display at the Paris air shows. Recall that the US in that era was also developing a supersonic plane via Boeing’s SST (a taxpayer funded boondoggle program that was eventually scrapped before a plane was ever built). Just as there was a “space race” there was a “supersonic race” between east and west.

The Soviets started w military jet engines and built the wings and airframe using what they knew from civil aviation, their space exploration and quite a bit of corporate espionage from the Concorde program. But the wings proved to especially tricky and they had lots of engineering problems. All done, of course, with woefully behind Soviet tech and manufacturing capabilities (employees in the top secret plant would work in a poorly heated hangar on a cutting-edge supersonic plane during the day, and then return home at night to their old, decrepit shanty houses that lacked indoor plumbing).

What emerged was a shoddy, highly unreliable plane (with a cabin noise level that was reportedly deafening) that famously crashed at Goussainville in 1973. Aeroflot scheduled the plane on a Moscow-Almaty route but it was so unreliable and expensive to operate that it rarely made the trip. The bird was eventually (and quietly) abandoned.

You must have been trying to book during a holiday or other price surge; you could book MEM-DEN right now for under €100.

When I flew regularly for work, when I had regional clients, I eventually gave up on flying and just drove instead. It would be a bit more time, and yes, driving sucks, but the wildly inconsistent delays and cancellations for the regional flights made it way more predictable to simply drive.

Even trains aren't as reliable here in the NE of US. Lots of closures, delays, cancellations regularly.

Both axis should start at 0

If you just want the numbers you should opt for the table of values. A graph adds value above and beyond a table because it enables visually derived insights into the differences and relationships between values. Physically skewing the visual characteristics of the graph can result in the visual derivation of false insights (Concourse appears to consume 10x more fuel when it really consumes 4x more).

When you are reading a table, you are expected to read.
When you are reading a graph, you are expected to view.

This graph provides plenty of visually derived insight, but not the specific one you chose.

It's the specific insight the author chose, not me. If we focus on the regression line characteristics then its fine viewed like this. But a title like "Supersonic Inefficiency: Why the Concorde was Decommissioned" along with a red dot for the Concorde is intended to focus your attention on how inefficient the Concorde is relative to the others. In regards to the main point the author intended to convey, the graph is misleading.

I ruled out Frontier when I said daytime departures.

Not the cancellation for tin foil hat crew, the laws re flying supersonic over land were passed around the same time.

The difference might be in longer flights. Paying twice as much to go twice as fast is not really worth it, except for a >16 hour flight, then it starts to seem worth it.

The Tu-144 was at least funny. Its 'Soviet engineering' nose solution is amazing.

It was also theoretically a lot faster, but shorter ranged.

It was also a testbed for many technologies which went into the Tu-160, the worlds fastest production strategic bomber.

The Soviets were actually ahead in a few relevant areas, namely exotic metalurgy and certain aspects of aerudonamic refinement.

The EU is serious about fighting monopolies, the US not.