“Currently, all civil aircraft flights are prohibited from operating above Mach one speeds over land in the United States.” [1]
Mike Bannister’s excellent book Concorde talks at length about how “handsomely profitable” the BA service was (as opposed to the Air France one) from 1984 until the 2000 crash and subsequent grounding put them in to a spiral where keeping enough people certified was too expensive.
One part of this profitable change in 1984 was surveying their customers (who typically did not book their own tickets) to see what they thought the price was. About $5000 was the perception. It was actually $3000, so they quickly raised the price to the perceived one.
Started reading the book again :). The $5k fares were the transatlantic ones. They made a lot of money doing day trips to Venice, Helsinki, Cairo, etc - places only Concorde could do in a day.
“Lord King’s edict that the aircraft had to be profitable within two-and-a-half years had been realised. There were times, in fact, when the seven aircraft in the fleet would contribute around 40 per cent of BA’s entire profits”.
My understanding was that, even for BA, the Concord was profitable on a cash accounting basis (as in, the tickets more than covered the cost of fuel, salaries, etc.) but not when accounting for a) the depreciation costs of the plane, which were much higher than for an ordinary Boeing or Airbus passenger jet since it was a one-off limited run and there were few spare parts and b) as you said, training new people to fly it, since it was an antiquated plane without a glass cockpit and the skills did not transfer to other planes. That's why it got harder and harder to justify over time until it was shuttered after the fatal crash during the general post-9/11 aviation downturn.
It also had a three person crew, and post 9/11 was the start of structurally higher oil prices, both of which were a death knell.
The true nail in the coffin was the development of the lie flat business seat, which meant that you could cross the Atlantic in three hours in a plush but cramped seat, or spend less money to sleep for six on a redeye and arrive well rested. At that point three hours was not a compelling enough time savings, but the Concorde also didn't fly far enough to do routes where the speed resulted in more significant time savings, like on transpacific routes.
London doesn't even require a red-eye from NYC--or actually from Boston/Washington although it's a very early star--on a conventional jet. I've done it pretty regularly. Not pleasant but I can get to London in time for a late dinner.
Also, my understanding is that AF was not profitable on Concord even ignoring those accounting costs. So AF wanted to shutter the plane after the accident, and changing the costs of shared maintenance equipment from 50/50 to 100/0 made BA's numbers go into the red too, because it wasn't very much profit.
Yeah of course there was always going to be an end date. However, there are people saying it was not profitable at all and that is not really the truth.
Bannister knows probably more than anyone about the topic and tells the story well. Thoroughly recommend the book. His tale of a guy called Bill being invited into the cockpit and discreetly given the controls to fly supersonic was awesome. Of course, later over a beer Bill (Weaver) talked of his times flying the Blackbird at twice the speed, and of the time it disintegrated around him.
LA to New York or San Francisco to Honolulu in 2 to 3 hours would be a game changer. You could probably fill a plane at least once a day on those routes for a handsome profit.
Once I flew north-west at the time of sunset. I had the view of the most beautiful big red sun right at the edge a sea of snow white clouds for more than an hour.
As a pilot, Americans are incredibly sensitive to aircraft noise. And regulators do all sorts of stuff to route planes around noise sensitive areas.
It breaks noise regs to fly most subsonic 1960s eras jets with their original engines these days, you have to modify them with hush kits, etc.
They forced a lot of these very American jets to be quiet for the sake of just the landing and takeoff phases. I have a hard time seeing that they would/will find a way to make sonic booms acceptable to the general public.
I suspect many more Americans could potentially sue the airline for the noise than English or French, due to the structure of the respective legal systems. So the financial risk of overland operations over the US, even with the ban lifted, could be too high still.
I thought about Hawaii also. Rich cities in Northeast Asia might also be a good target: Tokyo, Singapore, Seoul, Shanghai, Beijing to Hawaii might be good targets for weekly (or charter) flights. The tricky part (except Tokyo) would be negotiating supersonic flyover rights. I cannot imagine that Japan would be excited to have regular supersonic flights over their main island from Seoul or Beijing.
Regarding LA<->NYC, I think you could make a dent in that market with an all business class flight that flies slightly less than Mach 1 (0.95 or whatever) and has special security screening and baggage handling. People might be willing to pay 30-50% more compared to business class on a regular flight.
Last: Is there a video game like Theme Park or Railroad Tycoon that allows for the simulation of an airline market? That could be fun.
If Airforce One presidential plane is assigned to a sound-breaker, people will love the sound that comes from it. “Look the president is flying above us” people will say in excitement.
The product line was effectively cancelled by the oil crisis of 1973 and severe economic issues in the mid 70s. It had nothing to do with a crash (of an airplane; there was a market crash involved).
Because the 737 Max had type commonality with the old 737s, and because of how behind Boeing was on deliveries, the pilots could still fly on the old 737s and that stemmed some of the loss of money.
Concorde was a very unique plane, the pilots were specially trained for it, and having them sit around was expensive.
You don't know what you are talking about. The product line was cancelled many decades before the crash due to lack of sales. After the crash, the Concorde fleet was modified, returned to service and remained in service for another 3 years before it was removed from service and retired due to the high cost of operation.
Mike Bannister’s excellent book Concorde talks at length about how “handsomely profitable” the BA service was (as opposed to the Air France one) from 1984 until the 2000 crash and subsequent grounding put them in to a spiral where keeping enough people certified was too expensive.
One part of this profitable change in 1984 was surveying their customers (who typically did not book their own tickets) to see what they thought the price was. About $5000 was the perception. It was actually $3000, so they quickly raised the price to the perceived one.
https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ap...