[OC] Supersonic Inefficiency: Why the Concorde Was DecommissionedSubmitted by haboo213 t3_xtr2ft in dataisbeautiful
ProfessorrFate t1_iqrbx1l wrote
Every person in the media who reports on Concorde and civil supersonic aviation in general should see this graph. What’s dooms supersonic airline flights is not (directly) the laws of physics; it’s the laws of economics.
Flying at supersonic speeds uses exponentially more fuel, whether it was Concorde in the past or vapor ware proposals such as Boom in the future. This means dramatically higher operating costs, which, in turn, results in dramatically higher fares that are just not worth it for 99.9% of the flying public. And that is never going to change.
Given the choice between flying NYC-London for $1000 in 6.5 hours versus $2500 in 3.5 hours, 99+% of people will choose the first option each and every time.
imakenosensetopeople t1_iqrd7s1 wrote
Yep.
I wish we could start to tackle the non-flight times associated with flying instead. Boarding/de boarding, sitting on the tarmac, having to show up 2 hours early, etc. To take a 45 minute flight, it’s four hours from when I enter one airport and leave the other airport.
ProfessorrFate t1_iqrfdut wrote
Agree. But it’s often hard to embrace the message of “yeah, this is pretty much as good as it’s ever gonna get.” Not exactly an uplifting message the media might like to sell or that people want to hear. Especially in aviation, where the gains over the past 100 years have been mind-blowing (though in fact most of those gains occurred between 1903 and, say, 1973).
Since the 70s commercial aviation flying technology has mostly been about better safety and fuel efficiency. The first time I flew to Europe was on a 747 in the early 70’s. Now, some 50 years later, the typical economy class passenger experience is pretty much the same (if not worse).
Kev_Cav t1_iqurmj8 wrote
Maybe it's just an impression, but didn't air travel become much more affordable over the last 20 years? I remember when I was a kid, going to Japan or Thailand was a whole endeavour, you saved for it for years, it was the adventure of a lifetime, now it feels like any reasonably affluent middle-class couple can afford it without much fuss...
gHx4 t1_iquu502 wrote
Yes, there are more airlines doing flights more efficiently. The default package is about the same with a few corners cut. Planes are bigger and there's more routes to choose from, but the price of a ticket hasn't changed a lot.
Flights like LA to Chicago haven't changed price, but flights like LA to Osaka have. In other words domestic flights cost about the same after inflation, but international flights are now almost as cheap as domestic.
You can read a bit more here; the efficiency and selection are vastly different from the 40s.
ProfessorrFate t1_iqvgls8 wrote
Different market dynamics. And just looking at cost/distance doesn’t work well. Many short haul flights in the US are crazy expensive because of supply and demand (regional service on UA out of DEN or ORD is a good example).
Also: in Europe, the LCCs have to compete w railways — not so in the US, where airlines largely don’t compete w Amtrak (except in the Acela corridor).
Competition, supply/demand, AND distance (which is a cost function) all impact pricing. And of these three factors, distance is often the least significant variable in the model. Example: the ASM costs in the NYC-LA market are higher than, say, Denver to Billings, MT. But the amount of competition and demand/supply in these two markets varies dramatically, and therefore there are often cheaper fares to fly 2,475 nm from NY to LA than 455 nm from Denver to Billings.
HurlingFruit t1_iqv33gy wrote
What I cannot explain to my satisfaction is why airfare here in Europe is so much cheaper than back in the US. For example, I excluded LCCs because of their nickle-and-dime add-on fees and compared legacies, non-stop, coach, round trip, daytime departures of roughly the same distance. MEM-DEN United 872 nm, €616; MAD-DUB Iberia 902 nm, €133.
That is a ridiculous difference for essentially the same flight. Fortunately I'm taking the less expensive flight next month.
surreal_mash t1_iqvts3p wrote
You must have been trying to book during a holiday or other price surge; you could book MEM-DEN right now for under €100.
HurlingFruit t1_iqwowhk wrote
I ruled out Frontier when I said daytime departures.
iinavpov t1_irjwl5w wrote
The EU is serious about fighting monopolies, the US not.
donaldduz t1_iqvbn3u wrote
Covid seems to have reversed this and air fares are crazy expensive. Hopefully this is a short term problem while the supply side is sorted out. What do y'all think?
ProfessorrFate t1_iqvg1ta wrote
Yes, definitely more affordable now.
GrandArchitect t1_iqvw1gm wrote
When I flew regularly for work, when I had regional clients, I eventually gave up on flying and just drove instead. It would be a bit more time, and yes, driving sucks, but the wildly inconsistent delays and cancellations for the regional flights made it way more predictable to simply drive.
Even trains aren't as reliable here in the NE of US. Lots of closures, delays, cancellations regularly.
Simon_cant_jump t1_iqtckjw wrote
Not entirely true. It was in service for 27 years.
I agree 100% with the fact it used a lot of fuel, but the laws of economics mean it shouldn't have been in service for more than a year or so. It was popular enough to fly thousands in luxury for decades at a massive cost. It's the 1% that paid the ridiculous fares.
There's also a market for hypercars which make more power than a Formula 1 car from the eighties, and are stupidly inefficient and crazy expensive. The kicker is they almost never get used in anger (and if they do, usually end up in a ditch).
Not everything comes down to dollars and sense :)
ProfessorrFate t1_iqtgw41 wrote
The Concorde was given — for free — to BA and AF by the consortium (BAC and Aérospatiale) of government-backed companies that built it.
And this was back when both of those airlines were majority owned by their respective national governments (they were later privatized).
The plane was built by government-backed companies with huge government subsides and then given to airlines which at that time were subsidized by the taxpayers. That’s how they could “make it work”
Rat-Majesty t1_iqtf9nf wrote
Sense. That part.
cambeiu t1_iquoihs wrote
The Concord lasted for 27 years because of government subsidies. Without it, it would not have lasted 27 days.
The plane did not score one single sale. Not a single unit was sold to an airline anywhere.
Even the Soviets realized that the idea of a SST was madness and canned their TU-144 in less than a year of use.
ProfessorrFate t1_iqvjg2a wrote
TU-144 was a fascinating project. It was mostly about PR — there was no financial need whatsoever for supersonic civil aviation in communist states. But the Kremlin felt they needed to keep up appearances w the technologically advancing west. So they commissioned Tupolev (one of two government owned airplane makers, the other being Ilyushin, though I think they ended up using some Ilyushin people) to create a Concorde competitor to display at the Paris air shows. Recall that the US in that era was also developing a supersonic plane via Boeing’s SST (a taxpayer funded boondoggle program that was eventually scrapped before a plane was ever built). Just as there was a “space race” there was a “supersonic race” between east and west.
The Soviets started w military jet engines and built the wings and airframe using what they knew from civil aviation, their space exploration and quite a bit of corporate espionage from the Concorde program. But the wings proved to especially tricky and they had lots of engineering problems. All done, of course, with woefully behind Soviet tech and manufacturing capabilities (employees in the top secret plant would work in a poorly heated hangar on a cutting-edge supersonic plane during the day, and then return home at night to their old, decrepit shanty houses that lacked indoor plumbing).
What emerged was a shoddy, highly unreliable plane (with a cabin noise level that was reportedly deafening) that famously crashed at Goussainville in 1973. Aeroflot scheduled the plane on a Moscow-Almaty route but it was so unreliable and expensive to operate that it rarely made the trip. The bird was eventually (and quietly) abandoned.
TheNaziSpacePope t1_iqxyd9a wrote
The Soviets were actually ahead in a few relevant areas, namely exotic metalurgy and certain aspects of aerudonamic refinement.
TheNaziSpacePope t1_iqxy4s7 wrote
The Tu-144 was at least funny. Its 'Soviet engineering' nose solution is amazing.
It was also theoretically a lot faster, but shorter ranged.
It was also a testbed for many technologies which went into the Tu-160, the worlds fastest production strategic bomber.
zspasztori t1_iqv335v wrote
They cancelled the program be ause of crashes, not because of cost.
Tiny_Rodent_Man t1_iqrcsl8 wrote
Not only that, but the faster you want to make an aircraft move through the air, the more precise your engineering needs to be. Precision engineering at those levels is pretty much insanity. It's why the Blackbird was so technologically incredible but also such a maintenance and engineering headache. One small thing that goes wrong at such a high velocity and that's it. The whole thing can shred to bits from small unintentional vibration. It makes travelling that quickly not worth the risk for public use.
this_sort_of_thing t1_iqtydsu wrote
Laws of physics also doom it to some extent. Almost no country will allow them to fly supersonic over land due to the loud sonic boom, so you’re very limited to what kind of routes you can fly. There’s progress in aerodynamics that will reduce it but it probably won’t make it to any commercial supersonic jets for a long while.
ProfessorrFate t1_iqu91mo wrote
Yup. And also: trans-pac supersonic flight is especially tough because hauling that much fuel over such a long distance (versus TATL routes) poses its own physical challenges.
Pyrhan t1_iqtfslv wrote
>Given the choice between flying NYC-London for $1000 in 6.5 hours versus $2500 in 3.5 hours, 99+% of people will choose the first option each and every time.
Two counterarguments apply here:
-This may not hold true for very long routes, like LA to Tokyo and other trans-Pacific routes. Not spending 11+ hours stuck in an airplane is certainly a luxury many would pay a premium for.
Concorde could not fly such routes as it lacked the range, mostly due to its fuel inefficiency, which brings me to the second point:
-Those new proposals promise much higher fuel efficiency than Concorde. Granted, it's still nowhere near regular subsonic airliners, but still far below the figure shown in the plot above.
Does this mean they'll be successful? No, absolutely not. There are still major technical challenges they need to solve, and even if they do, it is unclear the aforementioned gains compared to Concorde will be sufficient to make them commercially viable.
Overall, I believe they are still more likely to fail than succeed.
But it is certainly not a guarantee.
RDMvb6 t1_iqu7sb2 wrote
Supersonic flight- if you have to ask how much it costs, you can’t afford it.
authorPGAusten t1_iqu9amh wrote
My guess is most people who would be interested in it already have private jets.
ProfessorrFate t1_iqvhyiv wrote
Well, yes, this is now a factor too. When Concorde was developed there were no biz jets that could do TATL or Trans-pac. Now there are Gulfstream and Bombardier planes that can do these routes. So if I’m a Fortune 100 CEO or a billionaire, I can choose to fly commercial and maybe get there a little faster if there’s a supersonic option but endure all the hassles and limitations of commercial aviation -OR- I can take a G700 and have a much, much more pleasurable experience (and bring along my wife/lover...and friend or clients...and the family pet. And it’s wheels up exactly when I command).
r2k-in-the-vortex t1_iqv5wtz wrote
>99+% of people will choose the first option each and every time.
No they don't. Most will, sure, but there are plenty of people willing to pay premium as evidenced by existence of business class. Concorde didn't die to fuel costs, plenty of passengers willing to pay that.
But that fireball takeoff from Paris, plus 9/11 and maintenance costs for such a small fleet... that's what killed Concorde.
ProfessorrFate t1_iqvfnfd wrote
Yes, there are unquestionably premium pax who will pay for J (biz class). Airlines love these pax. But the same fuel cost dynamics apply to J as they do to Y (economy). So any J seat in a supersonic will need to have exponentially higher pricing due to exponentially higher costs (which is why Concorde fares on BA were much higher than F fares on subsonic aircraft).
Since Concorde cost the airline nothing to buy (the plane was given to the airline for free), BA was able to make Concorde operationally profitable for a while based on the amount of demand for ultra-premium service on the London-NYC route and some charter business. But the singular nature of the NYC-London market (the province of exclusive bankers, lawyers, and media stars) makes that route unique in the world. AF never really made money flying the Concorde on its regular Paris-NY service.
And not long after the AF crash, the Concordes in operation were facing upcoming D Checks due to the total n of hours in service. A regulatory-mandated D check involves a total dismantling of the airplane for inspections of the airframe. Given the enormous cost of a D check, in most instances airplanes reach the end of their operational life at that point. No way did it make financial sense to do this. Concorde’s days were effectively over.
TheNaziSpacePope t1_iqxxtd6 wrote
The difference might be in longer flights. Paying twice as much to go twice as fast is not really worth it, except for a >16 hour flight, then it starts to seem worth it.
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