So no mention of Richard Branson (Virgin) offering to buy it and BA refusing because they have a long running feud? IIRC it started because BA got upset when Virgin offered better competition against long haul flights. That’s the part of the story of like to hear.
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It feels a lot faster when you can see the ground a few inches beneath your feet. 
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Ah, the old BA “dirty tricks campaign”. That was a particularly interesting tale of skulduggery and sharp practice.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/january/11/newsid_2520000/2520189.stm
I have no idea why those links aren’t one boxing but you get the idea. Virgin and BA absolutely loathe one another.
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Economics may win out in the end as the increasing cost of labour offsets higher fuel prices. It used to be cheap to travel between continents in floating hotels. Not now though.
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The economics of higher fuel cost are ameliorated somewhat by the the fact that faster speeds=>higher number of flights per aircraft. Keep in mind that when it was being designed, the airlines had only relatively recently replaced piston engines for long flights. Although part of the underlying reason for that transformation was the reduced maintenance costs of jet engines. There was the feeling that travel was getting ever faster and that this was an inevitable rule of progress. This was similar to the way people today often think about Moore’s law and computing power.
Instead of speed, the transformation of air travel was a great, price-driven democratization of it. The inflation adjusted price of a round trip transatlantic ticket on a piston engined stratoliner was ~$5000. And at that price it was unprofitable for the airlines. But in the 70s with lower prices we started to see air travel by the masses, instead of just the wealthy. The Concorde was designed for an earlier age, where only the well off traveled by air.
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I suppose since you landed, that doesn’t qualify your for the secret order of the double sunrise… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Double_Sunrise
True. I had not known about that, but it makes sense.
For the time, technologically wonderful. That said, it was really nothing but subsidised travel for the rich and I’m fairly glad it’s gone.
There was also a sort of undercurrent in European circles that…“You might have gone to the moon, but look here we did something useful. Behold the future of air travel.” Of course in the contest to seize the future with ever faster travel, we have the proposal for the generation after the SST. http://www.astronautix.com/p/pegasusvtovl.html Literally an ICBT (intercontinental ballistic transport)
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The American opposition to allowing it to land in New York on trumped up allegations that it was appreciably louder than other jets in service helped delay its introduction. And those allegations had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the Boeing 2707 SST had turned out to be a turkey.
BTW. Anyone any clue why American usage is to call it ‘The Concorde’ rather than just ‘Concorde’?
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That didn’t help. Airbus redesigned the plane’s tanks and tyres and just as it was about to go back into service 9/11 killed the business market. BA, who had been making a healthy profit on Concorde flights, decided it wasn’t worth keeping them in service and so the most beautiful thing ever built was retired.
Concorde is one of those very few things - like the TSR-2 - that still look futuristic today. And if you’re too young to know what that was - enjoy:
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Although if you want futuristic looking fighter jets of the past, I’d go with the F-103, although it never made it past the mockup stage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_XF-103#/media/File:Republic_XF-103_mock-up.jpg Or possibly the X-3, which was a dog despite its go fast appearance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_X-3_Stiletto#/media/File:Douglas_X-3_NASA_E-1546.jpg
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And the Avro Vulcan which is some Dan Dare-lookin’ shit.
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I’ve loved the Vulcan ever since I saw the movie Thunderball. To bring things around in a circle, there WAS an airliner derivative planned, the Avro Atlantic, but it never got past the drawing board.
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There was? Cool.
It seems consistent with other product names. It’s the iPad, not just iPad. It’s the Airbus A380, not just A380.
Still pissed off about the cancellation of:
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Before Continental got bought up by United, I recall (I believe) Gordon Bethune asked Boeing to design one of the 737 variants so it could cruise at 41,000, implying (to me) a pretty long flight if they’re going to get all the way up there and back. I remember the old 737s (-100 or -200) probably wouldn’t be used on any route longer than 1000 miles. Now there are regional jets flying routes longer than that…
ETA:
That same friction would cause the airframe to expand, causing a gap by the flight engineer’s station (remember those?). On the last flight, the pilot left his cap in there to be squashed as the airframe cooled. (It was later stolen.)
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That’s about how Emirates and Qatar were (they were only that long on the way back to IAD, though). I’m not sure that they had any movie I could think of, but they had more than enough that I was interested in watching. And those were 4 years ago, so I’ll assume it’s gotten better. Food was good.
Ethiopian wasn’t quite as good but that was 6 years ago. Just a few channels of movies and my son (then 4) and I ended up watching Dr. No over and over in both directions. I think they’re closer on par with the Gulf carriers now, trying to compete in a similar role but on the African continent.
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“Oh, I’m not that kind of scientist. I deal with reality.”
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I joke that it is the worst form of time travel. I have made an entire day and a half of my existence disappear! Arriving in the morning when your body thinks its midnight is annoying. So many things to do when arriving home, but my body feels so exhausted.
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