Economist on the final Concorde flight...

[Rohit Khare]

Raw bits... no room for emotion :-)

-- TRAVELMAN

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Air travel
After Concorde
Oct 16th 2003
 From The Economist print edition
Alamy

The less beautiful future of international business travel

CONCORDE is due to take off into the sunset from Heathrow airport on 
October 23rd on its last scheduled flight to New York. Its return to 
London the next day—touching down alongside two others back from 
farewell trips—will be broadcast live. The world's last five supersonic 
passenger jets will then head off to museums in Manchester, New York, 
Bristol, Barbados and Seattle, never to fly again.

Since British Airways (BA) and Air France announced Concorde's 
retirement in April, BA has been catering to supersonic virgins wanting 
a once-in-a-lifetime thrill. The planes have been full of noisy 
enthusiasts—more like a charter to Ibiza than a sleek business hop for 
dinner in Manhattan after lunch in London.

The bosses and investment bankers abandoned Concorde long ago. That is 
why there will be no replacement aircraft, at least in the short term. 
Airlines are now struggling to survive and focusing on cost reduction. 
Firms have slashed travel budgets, even for executives. Investment 
banking is still slow enough that transatlantic speed matters little. 
Still, one day, demand for fast long-haul flights could return. With 
only a modicum of technological progress, a quieter, more 
fuel-efficient supersonic passenger jet could be viable.

Before the crash of an Air France Concorde in Paris in July 2000, which 
killed 114 people, BA's top dozen business clients (the big investment 
banks plus multinationals such as GlaxoSmithKline and BP) each had 
Concorde flights included in their corporate deals. When Concorde 
resumed flying in November 2001, none of them wanted it any more. In 
its heyday Concorde typically flew three-quarters full, earning BA 
about £20m ($33m) in operating profits from 35,000 passengers a year. 
When it returned to service, paying over £8,000 to fly supersonic had 
lost its appeal. BA could attract enough business for only one 
transatlantic flight a day (instead of the previous two), and even then 
the aircraft was often carrying only a couple of dozen paying 
passengers. Extra seats were often filled by upgrading subsonic 
first-class and business-class customers. Delays and diversions due to 
bits falling off and engines faltering began to tarnish Concorde's 
image and emphasise its age.
Who killed Concorde?

A study commissioned by BA of the case for a £17m refit of the 
supersonic aircraft, which came into service in 1976, showed that its 
viability had ended with the turn of the century stockmarket boom. At 
the start of 2003, Airbus—the modern incarnation of the Anglo-French 
manufacturing partnership that created Concorde—told Air France and BA, 
the aircraft's only operators, that it could no longer provide 
technical support for the aircraft at anything like a commercial price. 
Air France, which never made as much from Concorde as BA, stopped 
flying it in May, but BA said it would keep Concorde going until 
October simply to please its fans.

Sir Richard Branson, part-owner of Virgin Atlantic Airways, then bid £1 
each for BA's Concordes. BA dismissed this as a mere publicity stunt. 
In fact, Virgin did want to keep the aircraft flying for a few months, 
running services to New York, Dubai and Barbados, priced at £1 below 
BA's first class fare on each route. The idea was to garner a rich PR 
harvest, before quietly bowing to the inevitable when Airbus called 
time on the ageing aircraft.

BA dismisses the suggestion that Concorde has been put down 
prematurely. In the end it was the halving of premium travel 
(supersonic, first class and business class) thanks to economic 
slow-down, terrorism and the Iraq war that sealed its fate. Its success 
with BA was always rather artificial, since five of the 14 aircraft 
that eventually went into service with it and Air France were handed 
over for nothing, for lack of other buyers. At one point, there were 74 
orders for the aircraft from 16 other airlines, half of them American. 
These were cancelled when rival supersonic aircraft being developed by 
Lockheed and Boeing were scrapped in 1971. It became clear that America 
would no longer favour supersonic flight, so airlines had no need to 
invest in them. America then fought for years, before relenting, to 
deny Concorde access to Washington, DC, and New York. Environmentalists 
attacked its noisy sonic boom and its fuel consumption. It was banned 
from flying supersonically over land, which made using it less 
worthwhile. High oil prices also hurt: Concorde requires four times as 
much fuel per passenger as a 747 to cross the Atlantic.

Developing Concorde had cost the British and French governments £1.1 
billion (about £11 billion in today's money) before it even went into 
service—nearly ten times what was budgeted. In 1976 work ceased on a 
Concorde B, with quieter, more economical engines and the ability to 
cross the Pacific. Another secret project to build an improved Concorde 
was explored by British Aerospace and Aérospatiale, the original 
makers, in the early 1990s. The idea was to develop a 225-seat 
aircraft, with three classes, flying at 2.5 times the speed of sound, 
25% faster than Concorde, able to go from London to Tokyo, all for the 
cost-per-seat-mile of a Boeing 747, the most economical big aircraft 
around. A likely development cost of £9 billion prompted the firms, 
through their joint venture, to build the Airbus A380 instead.

Concorde leaves a smaller hole in the market than when it was grounded 
in 2000. But BA, bereft of its standard-bearer, is looking for ways to 
cosset passengers forced to spend seven hours in the air between New 
York and London, not three and a half. One option being tested on 
evening departures from New York is a “sleeper flight” on which first 
and business-class passengers eat before take-off, then doze on BA's 
flat-bed seats in a dark cabin undisturbed by any meal service.

BA's rivals smell an opportunity. The quickest way to get from Oxford 
Circus to Central Park South will now be by executive jet. Using small 
airports such as London's Northolt and Teterboro in New Jersey it is 
possible to go from door-to-door in under eight and a half hours—about 
half an hour longer than by Concorde, but nearly four hours quicker 
than by BA first class between Heathrow and JFK.

Enter the peddlers of a timeshare at 35,000 feet called “fractional 
ownership”. The market leader is NetJets, owned by Warren Buffett's 
Berkshire Hathaway holding company. Instead of the hassle and expense 
of owning a corporate jet, a firm or rich individual can pay around $7m 
for access to 150 hours of flight a year. The rate of growth of 
fractional ownership has slowed globally of late, along with premium 
travel on scheduled services, but NetJets has doubled its sales in 
Europe in the past year, and hopes without Concorde to double sales 
again this year. Its service can work out at 25% cheaper than Concorde, 
if a small group shares a plane.

More speed on the ground may make up for less in the air. Corporate and 
fractional jets use small airports where check-in takes minutes and 
take-off times can be altered to suit. So, too, do new business-only 
airlines, such as PrivatAir, which runs services between Dusseldorf and 
Chicago and Munich and New York. Together they offer a mixture of 
control (fly when you want by charter or corporate jet) and privacy 
(feeling safer by travelling only with members of the same “club”), 
plus comfort in the air and on the ground.

There is a certain irony in the fact that Concorde, doomed from birth 
by its sonic boom, will fly for the last time only six months after an 
experiment by NASA, America's aerospace agency, showed how to quieten 
the boom by using a fatter wing on a modified fighter plane. No one is 
currently planning to bring back supersonic travel. But one day they 
surely will.

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The Concorde crash
End of a dream?
Jul 27th 2000
 From The Economist print editionReuters
Tragic discord

“WE believe there is no technical, safety or operational evidence to 
suggest that Concorde should not operate safely in the future.” So said 
Mike Street, director of operations at British Airways on July 26th, 
announcing the resumption of the airline’s supersonic flights, the day 
after the tragedy at Charles de Gaulle airport, near Paris, when an Air 
France Concorde crashed killing 113 people. It is to be hoped that he 
will never live to regret these words. BA sticks to its view that 
Concorde has another ten years or so of working life.

At this week’s Farnborough International Air Show, near London, bigwigs 
from the aerospace industry, arriving after the crash, were greeted 
with a headline in Flight International magazine: “Concorde: is this 
the end?” This was understandable, since the crash happened only days 
after BA had discovered worrying cracks in the wings of its seven 
Concordes, which date back to the mid-1970s. One aircraft had to be 
taken out of service immediately, and the other six may yet have to be 
grounded for checks and repairs.

The Air France plane, one of its fleet of six, was taking German 
tourists by charter to New York, where they were to catch an ocean 
liner. Though its raison d’être was to carry busy business people 
quickly to America from Paris and London, Concorde has earned much of 
its income from such leisure flights. Since its development costs were 
written off by the British and French governments many moons ago, both 
BA and Air France have profited nicely from Concorde. And its graceful, 
birdlike presence has enhanced the carriers’ image.

Beyond its usefulness to the two national flag carriers, the 
Anglo-French project heralded wider European co-operation in aviation, 
paving the way to Airbus, which has brought Germany and Spain into the 
fold too. On the day of the Concorde crash, Airbus was announcing the 
first orders for a new double-decker jet that will carry up to 650 
passengers (see article).

The first Concorde flew in 1969 and the aircraft entered commercial 
service in 1976. Since then, however, it has actually flown far fewer 
miles than other workhorses of aviation, such as the older Boeing 747s. 
Moreover, flying at supersonic speeds limits corrosion to the hull 
because the high temperature burns off moisture.

But the issue raised by the crash is to do with engines and old 
technology. Air France admits that last-minute maintenance was being 
done on one of the engines of the aircraft that crashed. Eye-witnesses 
saw fire in a port-side engine that seems to have spread to one beside 
it which was sharing the same pod. The pilot told air-traffic control 
he was attempting an emergency landing, before he lost control and the 
aircraft flipped over and fell to the ground.

Pilots of any aircraft routinely know how to deal with one failed 
engine on take-off. But, though it is far too early to be sure about 
cause and effect in such a crash, the Concorde’s problem seems to have 
been that the fire spread immediately from one port engine to the 
other. A modern twin-engined aircraft such as a Boeing 777 or an Airbus 
A330 can fly on and land safely with power on only one wing. But total 
loss of power on one side of a delta-winged aircraft is harder to 
handle.

Concorde’s design is based on a 1960s fighter aircraft, its engines 
adapted from military ones of the time. They use “after-burners” to 
generate extra power for take-off. That is why they are so noisy. 
Concorde’s previously perfect safety record speaks for these designs’ 
integrity. But the uncomfortable fact remains that no one today would 
design a civil jet with two engines in one pod; indeed the proposed 
Concorde Mark Two, a 200-seater development that was scrapped some 
years ago, had separate engines. Even if the accident turns out to have 
been caused by some one-off, tragic error by the maintenance crew 
working on the engine just before take-off, that might not remove the 
stain on the aircraft’s reputation.

=====================================

Fly the icon

Aug 30th 2001
 From The Economist print edition


Any day now the supersonic jet will be cleared for take-off


WHEN an Air France Concorde crashed in July last year, killing 113 
people, and the remaining 12 supersonic aircraft were grounded, it 
seemed as though the ageing plane would never fly again. But, after 
modifications, including a kevlar lining for the fuel tanks, tougher 
tyres and a stronger undercarriage, the authorities in France and 
Britain are close to restoring the airworthiness certificates needed 
before British Airways (BA) and Air France can restart their 
transatlantic flights.




BA has spent £17m on the technical improvements, and a further £13m on 
a revamped cabin and other improvements. Both airlines have upgraded 
and test-flown one Concorde, and are working on the rest of their 
fleet. BA needs three operational aircraft to run a daily service and 
five for a same-day return. The likelihood is that both airlines will 
re-launch at the same time in October.




In the months after the crash it appeared that BA was keener than its 
French competitor to relaunch Concorde. But the truth is that Air 
France did not want to appear insensitive, pushing for a return of the 
aircraft, after the horrendous accident which happened when one of its 
aircraft caught fire on take-off from Charles de Gaulle Airport. BA was 
never in any doubt that it wanted Concorde back in the air. It can make 
up to £20m operating profit a year carrying passengers between London 
and New York, at a return fare of around £7,000. The airlines are not 
prepared to say what fares they will charge, but the 3,500 regular 
Concorde users (many of whom fly back first class on subsonic flights 
after a day’s work in America or Europe) are unlikely to be 
price-sensitive.




There may, however, be fewer of them. It is not just Concorde that 
crashed: the Nasdaq high-tech stock index has plunged and the number of 
mergers and company flotations has shrivelled. So there will be no 
bands of investment bankers racing to close deals by zapping between 
London and New York at twice the speed of sound. BA is spending £1m to 
lure customers back. BA’s boss has already held two parties for regular 
Concorde customers to show off the improvements, and they will soon be 
invited on short test flights to get them in the mood. The aircraft’s 
importance to BA, however, goes beyond the money it brings in: the 
airline reckons its elegant, futuristic icon (even after 30 years) is a 
key part of its upmarket image.