Just read that NASA is scheduled to make a maiden flight with a new supersonic passenger aircraft in the year 2023. So sad that it has taken 54 years to get anywhere near to the graceful Concord but perhaps it is a reflection of the engineering skills and dare I say genious of the people of Britain and France all those years ago.
Who thinks we should ban it from European skies to begin with?
I don’t think I’ll live to see that. Interesting blog on this:
https://www.avweb.com/blogs/insider/Forever-Stuck-at-Mach-070-231042-1.html
Leaving the tech and economic challenges aside, the main argument in this article is that a return trip is not that attractive… but other models could evolve.
I could see these aircraft eternally travel westward, getting people to their destination at the same local time they left their homes or offices (including time to get to and from the airport), and a fleet of flying hotel beds going westward to get people back overnight. In the Concorde days, BA would upgrade First and Busieness eastbound passengers to Concorde for very little, as the pattern Concorde out – First return was quite attractive.
I did a google on the NASA project and found only this CGI model:
This is nowhere even remotely near a working airliner.
What seems to be real is that there is definitely a market for some hundreds of supersonic bizjets, at something like $100M-200M each, and several design bureaus around the world are working on that.
Airliners? Concorde was a success but didn’t sell because of the sonic boom combined with the not-invented-here boycott by the US. The fleet which continued to fly did continue to make money and plenty of it and could have continued flying almost indefinitely. But, with bizjets, economics are not an issue.
Fenland_Flyer wrote:
the graceful Concord
Nice yes, but it was a white elephant. Very similar to the Brabazon. The whole airline business went in another direction.
I disagree LeSving, it was US politics that killed Concord from the very beginning, as Peter wrote:
the not-invented-here boycott by the USdid so much damage from the start it set back the programme decades.
Fenland_Flyer wrote:
it was US politics that killed Concord from the very beginning
There nothing that can’t be explained with a dash of conspiracy theory 
The fact that the airline market gradually went from luxury/business to simple bus/train for the masses since 1950, and still do, has nothing to do with it?
White elephant, plain and simple.
You need to read the programme history, LeSving. The plane made money allright, on the routes it was flying. It could not get the routes, for various reasons, to get the airframe sales.
Peter wrote:
The plane made money allright
And so do those making biz jets, and still do. Only the volume is tiny compared to modern bus-aviation. The whole concept of the Concorde was for rich people to fly from London/Paris, then fly supersonic across the globe, creating sonic booms all the way in other people’s territories. I guess rich people in England and France where arrogant enough to see nothing wrong with this concept, but that doesn’t mean it is a viable concept. Then came fuel crisis, then global warming, but mostly an aviation industry turning towards a direction where real money could be made.
LeSving wrote:
I guess rich people in England and France where arrogant enough to see nothing wrong with this concept, but that doesn’t mean it is a viable concept
I cannot understand why you follow your rich man’s hobby when you have views like this!
