There's nothing about Concorde that ruined it for anyone else. The problems that killed SST programs—high fuel costs and noise—remain unsolved. The plane was a pretty remarkable piece of engineering given the physical constraints.

One more thing that shut down the Concorde was the post-9/11 increase in security procedures at airports, greatly diminshing the relative advantage of supersonic flights. If getting on the plane takes an extra (unpleasant) 45 minutes on each end, then the percentage time savings from supersonic flight is reduced.

The other thing for the super-rich is fractional jet ownership. If your flying to dinner in London from NYC, Your concierge experience at Teterboro to hop in a Gulfstream with nominal security is way more pleasant than facing the masses of wannabe VIPs at the big airport.

Is that it, though? I was under the impression that the rich flew private for time savings not because they actually enjoy the flight that much. Put me in a cattle car for an hour over a private jet for seven hours any day.

No security at Teterboro. Or most other private airports for that matter. Just a Customs check if you're going international.

Which is why there is continued work on "affordable" supersonic flight in the private business key industry and has been for decades.

What do delays at the arrival end of your trip have to do with 9/11? Customs screening for international flights has always existed; only security on the departure side has gotten slower, and this is a problem you can solve with not very much money by enrolling in pre-check.

Your air travel experience will be much more pleasant if you exclusively do carry-on. I've never needed more than a backpack and a suitcase. Most destinations have laundry machines.

My understanding is that weather, taxi gridlock, and under-provisioned gates are the primary drivers of slowness in airports.

Pre-Check is great, when you have it, and did not exist from 2001 until the concorde shut down in 2003, thus was a significant factor.

It is probably safe to say that almost anyone flying on the concorde at the time would have pre-check today.

From memory at LHR Concorde had dedicated check in and lounge (this was in 2003). I'm pretty sure we went through dedicated security for Concorde (might have been VIP) I certainly don't remember hanging around much.

Can't say what JFK on the way was back like as I flew to Barbados, where facilities were a little more basic.

There are still ways to get faster through security, London City airport always feels fast when I fly through it and one day I will do the BA001 flight (Concordes old number) to JFK where again I suspect time spent in security theatre will be small.

Airbus withdrawing support for it was what really killed it - BA wanted to carry on flying them but couldn't

Are post-9/11 security times really longer? Security screening actually seems pretty efficient (i.e. quick) to me. Even before 9/11 we had baggage x-ray and passenger metal detection. These measures were introduced in December 1972.

Adding to what the other comments say, these days a lot of the time through security is wasted on the multiplicity of items that have to go through the scanners.

Instead of just chucking your hand luggage on the conveyor belt, you have to take out your laptop and tablet, you have to take off your jacket, belt and shoes, and assorted metal things (keys, etc.) -- I usually end up having to use four trays for all my stuff when traveling internationally.

I remember the 90s well, when the security gate took less than 20 seconds -- you walked through the metal detector and then waited for your bag. Since the queue wasn't jammed up with people, your bag usually came out at the same time that you were done walking through the detector. Occasionally something set off the detector, of course, but then they just made you go through again without the offending item.

It's definitely much worse now.

I've never spent more than ~30 seconds actually being screened. The delay, if there is one, is waiting to get to the front of the line to be screened. This is an embarrassingly parallel problem and security at every airport could be trivially brought down to 60 seconds maximum by operating more lanes.

I was factoring the time spent waiting in line to get screened into my nostalgia.

Uh, yes? Versus literally just walking from the taxi at the drop-off curb to your gate, it is quite a bit longer. As you mention, there were some checks added over the years, but it was lightning fast compared to the current system.

Ever notice how older airports don't have the huge snarled lines of TSA checkpoints worked into their design? Instead they have disabled escalators that the line snakes down or a ton of stanchions forming waiting areas down side hallways and such. It's because there were no huge snarled lines at a few choke points when they were designed.

Not only that, but the checkpoints didn't even start until just in front of the boarding area. I remember the huge stink (although it may have been pre-911) when O'Hare decided that no one would be allowed in the concourse unless they had a ticket. Whereas I remember my mom taking a couple flights to my grandma's back in the mid 80's, and watching her board the plane and watching it take off from the terminal window.

I'm pretty sure this was part of a pre-9/11 national security process change made around the time of the 1991 Gulf War.

Yes. Airports used to be like Amtrak.

The baggage screeners just plowed bags through and looked for a guns, cartoon style time bombs and knives. I recall rushing my aunt to JFK as a kid and literally getting to the terminal 5 minutes before takeoff -- and she made it! Consultants who had to swap gigs for whatever reason would physically exchange tickets at the airport, no problem.

> Airports used to be like Amtrak.

I suspect our ideas about the efficiency and timeliness of Amtrak may differ.

Given the discussion about Concorde (and the fact that it practically had two routes), it's probably worthwhile to point out that the UK has long had a very strong distinction between landside and airside, and airport security didn't change anywhere near as much here as it did in the US after 9/11: the risk of terrorist attacks on aircraft had long been around in the UK. The big change was not being allowed sharps in the cabin, from memory.

Security didn't deter from the LHR–JFK route before with security at the UK end, and I doubt it'd deter from it at the US end.

At London Gatwick you know first have to present your boarding pass at a first set of gates. They're horrible - travelling with children you easily get in a position where your child is on one side of the gate, and you can't get to them. Last time the gate refused to open for me after I'd sent my 6 year old through, and I had to walk off to the side with a supervisor while my son was alone on the other side, for the security guy to check my boarding pass details and let me through manually (the reason they refused to open, apparently, was that my son stood too close to the other side; my boarding pass was then marked as having been used to pass the gates, even though the gates never opened, so next try it was being rejected regardless)

Then there's the baggage x-ray and metal detection, after which my son routinely (this has happened every time at Gatwick) gets pulled aside for extra screening, which involves x-raying his shoes, and passing him through an extra scanner, and then patting him down. I usually don't have to, but if I don't it means I won't be able to accompany him through a process he already finds uncomfortable and scary.

Nobody has been able to explain why he always gets pulled aside, and it doesn't happen on the return journey from Oslo (most of our foreign trips are to visit family in Norway).

(Meanwhile we routinely forget to take bottles of water or juice out of our carry on, and nobody has ever noticed it until I've realised afterwards; in other words, the fluid restrictions only work on people who voluntarily hand it over and doesn't put it in their bags.)

So while security can be quite efficient now, for a substantial number of passengers it's gotten to be a real pain, and it's pretty much unpredictable enough that you have to plan for it to take time just in case.

Yes. I have to opt-out every time I fly now which adds ~20-30 minutes to my visit to security.

Just pay for precheck.

It's $85 for 5 years, and realistically, yes, most of that money just goes to line the pockets of the politically connected. On the other hand, you can pretty consistently go from curb to club in 5 minutes, and you bypass the nude-o-scope.

I'm all for standing up for principle, but this one is already lost. TSA doesn't care if 10 ppm of the traveling population opt out. Google "managed inclusion" if you want to understand why organizing an opt-out protest on Thanksgiving (or generally encourage people to opt out) won't change anything.

Opt-out of what?

Presumably the millimeter wave body scanners, which are both invasive and relatively unstudied in its health effects.

Apparently millimeter wave radiation can be ionizing under the right circumstances. That's sort of terrifying.

http://arxiv.org/abs/0910.5294

The paper you referred to doesn't make any claims with regards to ionization - the effects considered are mainly having to do with the molecular dynamics behaviors of DNA.

Concorde tickets require global entry or your country's equivalent. Problem solved.

> require global entry

It's not a matter of people delaying or impacting flights, it's a matter of the flight being less appealing with inevitable security wait times.

Requiring anything like this will only make an already niche service less accessible with no benefit.

Some airports have special priority lines for the business and first-class passengers. There are no security wait times if you have the money to skip the lines.

Eg, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08... and http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/magazine/11wwln-lede-t.htm... .

And Concorde passengers had the money.

Global entry is easy to get and cheap compared to the cost of concorde travel.

Stupid easy. $100 fee for five years, background check, and a digital record of your fingerprints are kept on file.

I hope you missed the /s tags.

A background check and your fingerprints, because ..? I recently landed in Heathrow after a looong time staying in Europe (yes, England's not Europe) only. I was literally shaking when I saw all the people going through a random scanner, looking into a camera, providing their fingerprints.

Ignoring that the system didn't even work half the time while I was watching and that it needed a supervisor that reset everything, brought the people back out of the 'check zone' to .. turn it off and on again: That's insane.

This is the amount I'm willing to pay to a crappy government to go easy on me:

This is the list of governments that are allowed to take my fingerprints outside of a criminal investigation(* ):

Again, I really really hope you were just kidding and making fun of a bad situation.

*: The next time my German ID runs out I _might_ have to do that for my own home country - and I still try to figure out ways to avoid that/let the ID run out (illegal) without a renewal etc. And I try to vote for the parties that aren't insane.

I can't speak for the poster, but I have global entry and share the same sentiment without sarcasm. The government didn't "take" my fingerprints, I gave them to it in exchange for skipping most of customs and domestic security screening. The interview was probably the most noninvasive interaction I've had with CBE. If you don't feel like s worthwhile for you, then don't do it. If the government gets a hard on for framing me, they have much more surefire and efficient methods than planting my fingerprints. Until they start making the normal screenings worse to try and force people into it (which I don't think is the case, the TSA has gotten a lot easier to deal with in the last few years) I don't see it as a miscarriage of justice.

My GE interview was a joke. The only question I was asked was about my move from Atlanta to SF. For some inexplicable reason, I was asked three or four times if there was any gap between living in the two cities, to which the answer was no: I moved directly from an apartment in one to an apartment in the other.

That was the full extent of the questioning, which lasted maybe 5 minutes.

The scanners at Heathrow (at least the ones I used) don't take your fingerprints.

And the "I WON'T ANY GOVERNMENT HAVE MY FINGERPRINTS" is all fine and dandy, right until you, say, want to visit US and aren't a citizen of VWP.

Of course, you may value your beliefs about fingerprints higher than visiting some countries. Many don't. I don't.

Not sure if there are multiple models. The ones I saw had a gate (red/green, i.e. 'you can come in now' lights), and had you to put your hand down in a designated area / look into a camera.

Since I wasn't exactly able to move over and inspect the device from up close I admit that I just _assume_ that the hand thingy compares your fingerprints - I wouldn't know what else it could look at otherwise. Maybe it's just a bible and you have to solemnly swear not to be a terrorist, on camera. Looked weird from 10m away, everyone putting down their (right?) hand on the device, looking into the camera and waiting for the machine to say 'You are good to go'.

I don't plan to visit the US, ever. Personally I can easily state that I my desire to see some (probably) cool places over there isn't high enough to put up with the BS, professionally I am able to dodge any and all suggestions to go there so far - and will try to keep it that way (but that's the loophole: I won't sit on my hands and flat out refuse if my company forces me to go there. I will complain loudly and make sure that my unwillingness to go is heard though).

This is a perfectly valid criticism, global entry does represent buying in even further to an already intrusive and broken system.

This does sound insane, and a bit different from my last experience, albeit 2007:

Get off plan, walk for a long way following signs towards arrivals exit, spot sign for UK residents/nationals, no queue, a sleepy fellow looks at my passport and face, then I walk through to the arrivals area and try to find the underground station.

Have things changed that much?

It's those from outside the EU/EEA who have to do that. For those within, it's much the same, but also with e-Passport gates (that take a photo, compare with passport, etc.).

> England's not Europe

Great Britain lies on the European continental shelf, part of the Eurasian Plate. The United Kingdom is also culturally and politically affiliated with other European countries. Why is it not in Europe?

They are referring to Europe as a political entity not as the geographical feature. GB has generally considered itself separate from 'Europe' as a polity.

It would be like referring to someone from Cuba as 'American' because they are from North America. Technically true but people assume American means someone from the states.

In the UK, and particularly England which is a lot more euro-sceptic than the rest of the UK, it's a standing joke that the UK or England isn't part of Europe, and "Europe" is often used to refer to Europe or the EU excluding the UK.

Don't even bother visiting the US then. And no, even in VWP (Visa Waiver Program) and using a biometric passport, you still have to submit fingerprints and photo on the spot.

in germany you don't need a fingerprint even for new id's. not yet and not in the near future. it's up to you if your id will include them.

You do for a passport though, right?

(I thought also for the ID, but I was more confident about the passport.)

oh sorry I don't travel outside the eu (yet). for the ID you CAN but it's not a MUST. currently not sure if it ever will be a MUST since the new id's feature still aren't there as promised. it's a complete failure. still I know have a way smaller format for my id which is great!

The fuel costs are just a function of ticket prices. The passenger pays the fuel prices.

Once BA worked out that most Concorde passengers didn't buy their own tickets, they increased pricing dramatically. The passengers didn't drop off.

In some markets, higher prices signal certain status which then allows even higher demand. Same with exclusive real estate, jewellery, artwork, etc. As long as supply is limited it's not necessarily a problem.

I can confirm. My SO is cabin crew. One of her trips is London, UK to Lagos, Nigeria. The passengers manage to buy out all the duty free onboard. This is in addition to the gifts in the luggage hold. She has actually seen arguments take place over duty free, i.e. someone buys up all the Taittinger, others would like a few bottles but are now locked out.

Sonic booms are far better understood now than they were back then — the research done on the basis on the XB-70 (i.e., the Oklahoma City sonic boom tests) is arguably less relevant than ever, as we understand better than ever how to effect sonic booms, especially with shape of the aircraft.

Is the noise truly a probably or was that just lobbying by Boeing to make sure it didn't succeed?

Here's what it sounds like to have a supersonic Concorde fly overhead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=annkM6z1-FE

And here's what it sounds like on takeoff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1ShTUVIzCI

Note that it sets off nearby car alarms.

Turbojets are truly that much louder than the turbofans we're now used to. At the time it was only a bit louder than contemporary aircraft, but everything else got far quieter. Concorde is more comparable in engine noise to a modern fighter jet than it is to most commercial aircraft.

At the time it was built, it was a little bit noisier than the 707. The only issue is that while planes got much quieter (as the 707 was retired for example and new ones appeared), Concorde kept on flying...

So in a way, it got louder with age.

It's always been seen to me as a supreme irony that a country that sells two-stroke leaf blowers and line trimmers by the chinese-container load was worried about a 4-times-day distant thunder-like rumble.

Much more is understood about the noise footprint now than in the '60s.

I used to live under the Concorde flight path in and out of Heathrow, and yes, it was noisy (even travelling subsonic). Every day at about 1000 there'd be this deep-throated roar and the windows would start rattling[ * ], I'd look up, and there'd be this beautiful delta-winged shape sliding through the sky.

It was completely unlike the noise a normal jet makes, more like a rocket engine than anything else. I can't say it particularly annoyed me; I liked knowing it came from Concorde.

[*] To be fair, I didn't have very good windows.

Yep, it is a problem (though not on the ocean flight obviously). I'm pretty sure Boeing would have liked to sell a SST given what they spent back in the day and their teaming with NASA to figure out a way to reduce the sonic boom. http://www.nasa.gov/aero/centers_tackle_sonic_boom.html

> The problems that killed SST programs—high fuel costs and noise—remain unsolved.

Reducing sonic boom noise is something we do understand.

Is there any real advantage for 'regular supersonic flights' these days? Shaving an hour or two off the flying time is all well and good, but on nearly every trip I spend more time in the airports and taxis than in the air. Perhaps greater time savings could be made elsewhere and with far less effort.

Supersonic aircraft wouldn't be used on shorter domestic routes. As you say, the time savings are insignificant. More importantly, sonic booms prohibit most over-land flights.

But supersonic transport could win for long-haul flights over ocean. Depending on the direction, SFO-TPE takes 11-14 hours. Going at mach 3 would cut that down to 4 or 5 hours. Airlines could charge significantly more for such speed. Faster trips also mean that each plane can make more trips per day. For a trans-pacific route, a 777 takes over 24 hours to go back-and-forth once. 300 passengers go west, 300 passengers go east. A mach 3 transport, even if it had half the capacity, could ferry more people in the same time period. If fuel costs were low enough (unlikely, I know), the supersonic craft could actually be more profitable than the 777.

Concorde didn't have the range for trans-pacific flights. If you compare its times on very long-range flights with today's flights they're much less impressive than shorter flights: its best JFK-Heathrow is under 3h (2:52:59) to a subsonic ~7h, but its best Heathrow-Sydney is 17h (17:03:45) to a subsonic ~24h.

Concorde had a range of 3900nmi (7200km/4500mi), a 777-200LR has a range of 8500nmi, an A340-500 HGW has a range of 9000nmi

The comment I replied to discussed supersonic transport in general, not the obsolete Concorde. That's why my comparison used a hypothetical SST with longer range and higher cruising speed.

Range aside, wasn't the problem with London-Sydney that most of the route is over land, and can't be supersonic for noise reasons? At least, IIRC, that's what killed the Concorde in the potentially very lucrative US east-west coast market.

Heathrow-Sydney required a lot of subsonic sectors though (eg over India).

In theory Concorde could perform a one-stop Sydney to LA service (stopping at Cassidy International, Kiribati), supersonic the whole way.

Just remember the sonic boom thing was more of a political problem than anything else.

If say the US had come up with something else than just a wooden supersonic airliner (Boeing 2707), I guess swallowing the supersonic pill would have been easier.

Plus realistically, it's not like military planes are not allowed to fly supersonic over their own countries. Really, solutions, routes, compromises could have been found, it's just no one had the guts to.

When British Airways retired one of its Concorde to Seattle, it flew from New York / JFK to Seattle, it flew supersonic over Canada. Flight time: 3 hours and 55 minutes. Regular flight time is more like 5h30. Supersonic all the way would have been even quicker...

The RAF have to get special permission to fly supersonic over land. Last time it happened (to intercept something) people called the police!

FWIW, this article doesn't concern regular supersonic flights but 'fly-pasts at air shows and made available for corporate and special events, as well as for private charter.'

As to your question, it rather depends on the cost, doesn't it?

To start with, it saved about 4 hours on the Paris/NYC connection, not "an hour or two." If it were only $400 more to save 4 hours of overseas travel, then many would jump at it, and find it a real advantage.

I really wonder how they could even do fly pasts at air shows.

The only technical reason (technical not economical) Concorde doesn't fly anymore is because the type certificate, aka the airworthiness of the aircraft, was surrendered by Airbus, hence grounding all the fleet and making it unlawful to fly it.

So to fly it, they would need that to be reinstated.

For the Avro Vulcan, they went through a different aerospace company for that.

I'd love to be wrong, but I doubt Airbus would let anyone fly one of its Concorde...

They could still fly the aircraft within the UK on a restrictive Permit to Fly, rather than on a type certificate.

That does not require manufacturer support, it's similar to US Experimental classification. But it would not permit carriage of passengers.

As far as I'm aware, XH558 flew on a Permit to Fly from the CAA, hence why it never left the UK. Note that being on a Permit to Fly restricts it to VFR.

Sure, but the cost rather depends on physics.

Concorde wasn't $400 more than an equivalent flight. It was >$11,000 more than a similar comfort premium economy class seat, and that's after the British government had underwritten the losses from the design program (around $2000 per passenger per flight in today's money)

Certainly. But sandworm101 asked about regular supersonic flights as a general concept, and not specifically about Concorde.

FWIW, the full economics must note that people with a lot of money are more likely to hop on a business jet and get point to point service. When Concorde was designed, business jets that could fly non-stop between US and Europe had just barely entered the market. (The Gulfstream GII, May 4, 1968 vs. first demonstration flight of the Concorde 2 March 1969.)

> Shaving an hour or two off the flying time

Concorde crossed the atlantic (JFK to Heathrow) in ~3h15 (flying time, excluding ACT delay and the like), a standard subsonic flight takes ~7h.

I feel like the best use case is international flights. Being able to cut down the time significantly would be a huge improvement.

Honestly though I think shaving off an hour or two is worth quite a lot. There are many people who have conditions, like claustrophobia, people with knee and back issues or hell just regular people get uncomfortable when you're flying for hours and hours. My last two flights were both almost 6 hours each way and I was incredibly sore and ready to get off. It's anecdotal, sure, but I don't know a person who doesn't feel the same way.

Anything that improves the quality of life is good and when these types of planes are more ubiquitous the prices will drop and they will become normal. See Concorde Mark 2 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/industry/eng...

And if those people flew international business/first, they'd be a lot more comfortable and it would likely be cheaper than an SST. The Concorde specifically was actually rather cramped. Certainly compared to today's seats up front in a widebody but even compared to first class seats of the time.For me, an 8-12 hour flight is a bit boring but, honestly, it's not really uncomfortable if you fly business and that's the relevant comparison to an SST.

BA now operates a number of the old Concorde flight numbers (BA1, notably) as business-class only flights on an A318 from London City to JFK, with a fuel stop (and customs and immigration pre-clearance at Shannon) on the westbound flight (due to London City's short runway). I do wonder if Concorde would be more profitable nowadays following that example, seating a very small number in standard business lie-flat seats. (Though maybe one doesn't actually need actual flat seats, given flights are all under four hours.)

LA-NY is a key route for SST but was blocked because it was overland. This was one of the main reasons it took forever to become profitable and also why only two airlines ever flew them, and were virtually given the planes.

Even spending two hours in the airport at each end doesn't even equal half the trip if I'm taking a 10-hour flight. And it's only 80% of the trip if I'm taking a 5-hour flight.

I fly coast-to-coast regularly, it's about 12 hours door-to-door when I get a good connection and not even 7 of those hours are in the air.

Sounds like the problem there is layovers.

yeah, I used to fly London-San Francisco regularly. About 11 hour flight time. With hand luggage only, that came down to 16 hours door to door (based on hotel in Palo Alto or Menlo Park), of which 1h30 was travelling between home and London Heathrow.

The moment you need connecting flights is when you start racking up the extra time rapidly.

Reading the article, it's not headed back to commercial service but instead for air shows and private charters.