First class boarding first? Nah. The real way to fly first is to stay in the lounge until everyone else is on and board at the last moment.
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You’re right, and I agree.
I’ve thought for a long time that there should be 1st class lounges at every gate so that steerage can board back to front and then the fancy flyers could walk on right before pushback. This would lead to faster airports, as @Counterspin was suggesting.
However, this would be efficient. We can’t have that now can we?
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As JohnEightThirty points out, Concorde’s demise was largely due to economics. The restrictions associated with noise were a part of that, but fuel, passenger capacity, & design limits were all factors. Consider the Boeing 747 which entered service just a few years before the Concorde: the 747 evolved into at least 21 variants and new airframes are still being produced in 2018!
Avionics improvements aided even old 747’s and design and material advances made new ones more efficient and quieter over time. Cruising at 0.85 mach, a 747 often carries 5X or more passengers than a Concorde could hold.
I hope NASA succeeds, but even if they do, generally only the 1% class who can afford a ticket on one will benefit.
Reminds me of the joker who said, “Did you hear that the Concorde now has coach class at 1/2 price? Yeah, the flight still takes 3 hours, they just don’t let the coach passengers off for 3 more hours.”
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Nice video ! Am I wrong to say that fuel consumption was an other big downside of the Concorde ? It could be an other reason we won’t have an other supersonic civilian plane soon…
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An other cool video about supersonic passenger planes :
The concorde was never supersonic near airports, what idiot would believe one would take off or land at supersonic speeds?
But I have seen (and heard) the concorde fly over airports. Its engines were noticeably noisier than the ones of other airplanes. I am not sure why.
It was also a surprisingly small aircraft, much smaller than the pictures would make you believe. I have heard it was a bit cramped inside. But it was twice as fast as any other commercial aircraft.
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Who said it was ?
It’s really small indeed !
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=^. .^=
Meow!
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Interesting discussions in the comments about QueSST, Concorde, TU 144 and why the USA didn’t build a super sonic airliner, with a couple of links to related stuff.
The design aim for the QueSST is to reduce the sonic boom and direct most of its force upwards. Well, we’ll see.
OTOH, it looks like something out of a Gerry Anderson TV series, so what’s not to like?
As to the Concorde: when it entered service, it could outrun most of the jet fighters of the day, and then some.
And then there’s this:
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Only after they get the plane built do they discover that the silence is deafening.
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woof
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About 5 years ago I was in Australia, and a plane I took both boarded and deboarded from both the front and rear doors at once. It was an eye-opening experience how much difference that made. No idea if it is a standard procedure there or not.
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This is war pr0n, not speed pr0n
I’m pretty sure the Concorde’s engines (a variant of an existing engine) were unique to that aircraft. That may have been a factor as far as “noticeably noisier” engines.
In the late 70s we uni students took part in gathering Concorde landing noise level data at JFK airport, usually from locked, instrumented sites at an ‘outer marker’ and from city government building rooftops. Not only were the engines loud, but they had an audible quality that was distinct and clearly different from other aircrafts’ engines. That could have been solely attributable to the engines, but perhaps also to the scary high angle of attack while landing (so acute that it made me wonder how its passengers could not be wetting their undies while on approach).
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worse. A reservoir basin.
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I have to wonder if the US Military ever tried to find a way to MAXIMIZE a sonic boom as a weapon? Say, fly a supersonic drone designed to create as much noise as possible at low altitude over an enemy stronghold to bust out windows and disorient and deafen people on the ground?
(Not that I’m advocating such a thing, it sounds nasty.)
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Oh yes. For the 60s SLAM (supersonic low-altitude missile) project, a nuclear-powered Mach 3 robot bomber, part of the charm, besides the screaming hot radioactive exhaust, was the sonic boom path it would trample across Russia.
I don’t know if free versions of similar research are available:
I have a feeling that some public reports were to downplay the effects of sonic booms over friendly territory.
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