Concorde To Fly Off Into The Sunset
from the there-goes-that-plan... dept
The Concorde always had some mystique to it (even after the crash). However, that mystique just isn't enough to pay the bills, apparently. British Airways and Air France announced today that they'll be ending Concorde flights later this year. They say there aren't enough passengers, and maintenance costs are rising. Apparently, the majority of passengers for the 3-hour trans-Atlantic flights were American, and Americans just aren't flying any more. As you might imagine, the leftover Concordes will probably make their way into museums.
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why
Wasn't that the *only* crash the Concorde ever had.
And didn't it turn out to be debris on the runway (not the Concorde's fault).
Kinda like when the Soviet concorde had to perform evasive manuveurs to avoid hitting the French Mirage spying on it at the Paris Air Show. Well-- it was a passenger plane, it wasn't designed to perform evasive manuveurs with a fighter, so it spectacularly ripped itself apart. Thus ended the Soviet supersonic passenger plane program.
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Well, yeah.
Concorde was supposed to really make money on trans-Pacific flights, but it was designed at the height of the fuel crisis in the 1970s and therefore had too-small tanks. And at the time, the only developed destination in Asia (Narita Airport) was besieged with leftist student protests over the supposed plight of farmers living near the airport.
I remember having a toy Concorde plane when I was 6, and I dropped the pointy tip on my eye and it hurt like hell....
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Nice Article, but consider the times...
Even if you could ignore the effects of the Internet, remote conferencing, IPV6, IM and email (not to mention email on traditional airplanes) all contribute to world that doesn't need to travel as often. And when we do travel, we're so well connected, we aren't in a hurry to get there.
Maybe FedEx or UPS or DHS will announce that they are buying the grounded birds.
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