Plans for Concorde

All the spares and all the drawings were sold off seperately as souvinears, rather be kept as a record. I don't suppose a 1930 coal fired power station had quite that kudos!

Unless there was much else involved it would appear that somebody got away with a massive ripoff, having correctly judged that he/they had BA over a barrel.

I think most of the cost was development (so, lots of non-pax Concorde flying) and certification (more expensive flights!). When you think of the years that it took to get the intake and the intake computers right initially, then all the 'control' side of that had to be repeated.

What does suprise me is that the component drawings and specs have been lost.

So have the drawings of the SaturnV rocket and the Apollo spacecraft...

Storage space is a limited resource and life goes on. In aerospace projects, the documentation takes up a lot more volume than the aircraft/spacecraft itself. When I was doing the six months practicum of my engineering study in 1982, the company where I did it (ERNO Raumfahrttechnik, now part of EADS Space Transportation) had just completed Spacelab (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacelab). It was flown to Cape Kennedy in a Lockheed C-5 Galaxy together with it's ground support equipment. Another two Galaxy flights were required to ship the documentation to the States. Nobody (and especially no commercial company) can afford to store such a mountain of paper long after the project has finished. Nor can it provide the manpower and resources required to digitise those documents.

And regarding Airbus sabotaging the resurrection of Concorde: EADS-Airbus is a commercially oriented public corporation that does not report to the French - or any other - government, but to it's shareholders (among which my life insurance company and therefore a little bit myslef. And yes, I know, some large shareholders are goverment owned, but the majority is public stock). It will happily accept every project for which the cost-benefit analysis produces a result in the "benefit" range. Obviously, the sums discussed so far for reviving Concorde are not sufficient to raise the commercial interest of Airbus.

The Apollo drawings are all on microfilm. Likewise, even the TSR2 documentation has been saved.

Much as I enjoyed watching the Vulcan at Farnborough, there must be more deserving charities for the huge sums of money that it costs to keep these aircraft flying. Even if you wanted to restrict yourself to aviation charities, £1,000,000 would keep flyability going for ages and you could probably fund 50-100 school aircraft building projects.

Unless there's a chance of getting it on a PtF...

I agree the Concorde was a great engineering project at the time. However, I found it rather stupid for BA and AF to keep it in operation for such a long time. It was clearly mis-designed and had no economical value. I would argue that we would be much further with a commercially viable Mach 2-3 airplane if they didn't stick to the Concorde for so long and kept on burying money.

PS: At our museum they have a Tupolev TU-144 right next to the Concorde. Maybe it would be cheaper to get that one flying again?

Why would a TU144 be cheaper to return to flight? It'd cost at least as much and you'd end up with an inferior aeroplane. You have to remember that USA, Europe, and USSR were in the supersonic airliner race in the 1960s and 70s, because certainly until the early '70s the entire industry believed that the future of commercial aviation was supersonic and the successful competitor would take the entire market. Of those three, only Concorde 'worked' as a practical airliner and thus was the only one that saw 27 years of several times a day service.

Concorde was certainly not 'miss designed' in any way; it was technically superb and as stated above was something the world's 2 superpowers could not emulate.

However, the world changed, as did the airline industry. Wide bodies came along and the emphasis switched to cost reduction per seat, and attracting the mass pax sales rather than catering for a wealthy elite. So they only built 14 Concordes for airline service, so the economics were hopeless.

The money lost on Concorde was lost at the development and build stage, so operating them for as long as possible made economic sense. BA made a great deal of money from their Concorde operation, the British and French taxpayer picked up a lot of the development and build costs. I don't know whether AF ever made an operating profit on Concorde (BA didn't until privatised).

I've no idea what went on politically in AF, Airbus, or the French Government following the Paris crash. But four things are certain:

1) The Paris accident was about far more than a bit of metal debris on a runway, and not for nothing were the AAIB kept at arms length by the BEA during the investigation. There's a comprehensive BEA report that raises more questions than it answers.

2) Air France wanted out of Concorde ops having lost one at Paris and then almost put another into the North Atlantic when an FE mishandled an in-flight fuel leak.

3) 'France' did not want to see UK as the sole operator of a superonic airliner.

4) Airbus wanted out of Concorde support. They had a lot of clever people tied up supporting an ageing airliner which, though technically brilliant, was a commercial backwater. They wanted to use that talent on current Airbus projects.

The outcome was inevitable.....

Maybe it would be cheaper to get that one flying again?

That has been done by NASA in 1995. The operated it for test flights between 1996 and 1998. According to Wikipedia, NASA spent 350M$ to get it flying again! And it had not been in storage as long as the Concordes have been now.

BA made a great deal of money from their Concorde operation, the British and French taxpayer picked up a lot of the development and build costs.

The taxpayers picked up all the development and buliding costs because BA paid only one Pound for each Concorde. Had they been forced to pay the true capital costs of these aircraft (even if the numbers that were originally planned could have been built thus reducing the cost per unit) they would have lost a lot of money operating these aeroplanes.

Concorde was certainly not 'miss designed' in any way;

I second that! The two most brilliant designs in the history of aeronautical engineering for me are Concorde and the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME) (and GPS maybe). Concorde, because even today after 50 years and with more modern materials and electronics we would not be able to build an SST that is significantly better. We could maybe reduce the fuel consumption per passenger mile by 15 percent and get it a little quieter, but this is about it. And the SSME because no powerplant ever built comes closer to the thermodynamic optimum. It is physically and technically impossible to get more thrust from burning hydrogen and oxygen than with an SSME.

Just to kill the myth of the 'one pound Concordes', BA paid about £25M each for them. Far less than the real cost (which would have been prohibitive) but a bit more than a VC10 or other contemporary airliner.

The original Concorde deal had the government underpinning Concorde's operating costs, but taking the profits (negligable at that time). They also owned the spares and a couple of airframes. On privatisation Lord King brokerd a deal whereby the government would step out completely, BA would pay all costs and keep any profits, and the spares would be sold to BA. They also got the spare airframes as part of this deal for a nomival pound each - I say again 'as part of the package', not a stand-alone sale of the airframes. That's where the £1 Concorde myth comes from.

Once King had control of the operation he set up the seperate 'Concorde Division' in BA and made it profitable. He did the latter by vastly increasing fares as BA had not been charging enough (King asked pax what they tought a ticket cost and the estimates were 200% of actual cost - so he reasoned that's what the market expected to pay, so that's what he charged!).

BA also introduced the charter business, the 'pleasure flights', and lots of other profitable schemes to make best use of the aeroplanes. From then on, it made very good profits for BA (so one of the privatisations that really made sense!).

don't suppose a 1930 coal fired power station had quite that kudos!

Surely not Vince! A coal fired power station..surely that must have involved steam at some point

Obviously anything like this can be solved with money, but do you think Airbus were instructed by the French Govt to sabotage the project?

Both by Air France, who could not bear to stop flying but allow the Brits to do so and by the French Government who thought equally.

Otherwise, as Concorde was worth nothing to them scrapped, they ought to have accepted an offer for the Type Certificate.

Airbus have been quite flippant about type certificates. Concorde is not the first one they simply pulled and with it the rug from under the willing operators. The same thing happened with the Caravelle, where several African operators found themselvs sitting on a superbly maintained and flight ready museum piece without much prior notice. Frankly, it was unfortunate that this was never challenged in court or even on a higher level like the WTO, because it means that Airbus will deny people it or its predecessors sold planes to the right to fly them.

Personally I feel there should be a law which should stop manufacturers from pulling Type Certificates while there are servicable airframes or at least force them to sell it if they are unwilling to support the airframe. Pulling it and saying no, we won't sell it either, should be forbidden.

My own consequence is that I will never own a French made airplane as if they do it on that scale, they might well do it again.