When Concorde was the future | Hacker News Reader

When Concorde was the future

1843magazine.com

56 pointssohkamyung39 comments

Short on text, but a good selection of photographs.

For people really, really interested in Concorde, I reccomend this thread: https://www.pprune.org/tech-log/423988-concorde-question-100...

(yes that's page 100!)

That 100+ pages Concorde thread on PPRuNe, with lots of technical details, anecdotes, and actual Concorde captains and engineers chipping in, is absolutely epic!

I saw one in real life for the first time this summer, at the Museum of Flight near Seattle. It looked beautiful of course, but the cabin was incredibly confined. Not like airlines are known for their cabin space, but I don't know if I'd take a faster trip in such a confined space over a cramped seat on a longer flight.

For the same ticket price, you could fly international business class... or better.

I flew an Air France Concorde on the JFK-CDG route and it was definitely a tight fit... but completely worth it. Business class is nice, but nothing compared to chopping a few hours off time spent in dry, high altitude cabin air.

I've never felt as good stepping off an international flight as I did with Concorde. Still wish I kept the ticket though.

It may be worth noting that, while the Concorde had smaller seats than the first class seats of that era, those first class seats were still nothing like modern lie-flat business.

The point of lie-flat seats is to let you doze off on long trips. The point of Concorde is that even trans-Atlantic trips weren't log enough for that to matter. You don't get lie-flat seats in first or business class on many US domestic flights either, for the same reasons.

That’s starting to change though. United is reconfiguring a lot of their aircraft for Polaris seating even domestically. The seats are more comfortable though I agree it doesn’t make as big a difference on even long daytime flights.

To put into perspective of how tight the Concorde is on space. The Dreamliner that sits in the same room as the Concorde has engines with a fan diameter that is virtually the same size as the diameter of the Concorde's fuselage (112 inches vs 113 inches)

Looking back the 1970s was also when mass tourism in Europe went in full swing. Paid holidays became a human right. While in the US low cost shuttle flights were the new railways.

And club of rome published the meadows report in 72. Odd.

And soon:

When the AirBus A380 was the future

Sadly the A380 never was the future, it was a reincarnation of the MD-12 of the 1990s.

The only way to obtain a magnitude reduction in seat-km costs was to go all-in on advanced aerodynamics like a blended-wing-body. Once Airbus had shied away from that there really was no logical reason to continue.

Still, a wonderful plane for pax. Spacious, smooth & quiet.

The main picture is F-WTSC . It was the test flight registration of F-BTSC, the plane which crashed in 2000.

There is a popular video on YouTube outling the reasons why Concorde failed. Mainly it came down to market, expense, and not a business fit.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=a_wuykzfFzE&t=12s

Sonic boom over land (IE - people) was also a big issue. They originally thought 3rd world countries would be ok with it. Which turned out to be wrong.

I am a bit puzzled by the pollution remark, wealthy people are flying private more than ever, the general public has more cars that are each bigger, and the General Aviation is recovering form 2008

Having tried to revise for exams while they landed a few miles away, I'm going to suggest that the article is including noise pollution as well as particulate pollution. It was bloody loud.

when I was the kid they were a Rhythm in my life, twice a day, at 11am and 5pm

I think the article is incorrect, they say that only British Airways and Air France operated the Concorde, but I believe Singapore Airlines did as well.

https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=137409 suggests that it was a joint venture, effectively a loan of one from BA to Singapore for a while.

You are correct: https://mothership.sg/2017/07/sia-is-one-of-only-a-few-airli...

BA's G-BOAD was painted on one side in Singapore Airlines livery, and jointly operated for three round trips to Singapore via Bahrain; I don't know if any Singapore Airlines crew were involved in the operation.

A more obvious example of another airline is the Dallas to Washington flights (and on to London and Paris), which were operated by Braniff airlines crews within the US (as they couldn't be operated by any non-US airline), and the aircraft changed to US registrations for each of the domestic legs.

The Concord wasn’t allowed to fly at super-sonic speeds while over the continental US, so the poor Braniff pilots didn’t get to really have the full experience (other than in training).

Not only Singapore Airlines, but US-based Braniff International Airlines briefly operated Concordes (sort of) around 1980.

https://airwaysmag.com/uncategorized/concorde-airlines-brani... is an article I found that matches my recolection (at least) for how that worked.

As an aside, that advert for the Rolex GMT Master Chronometer says the price for the steel model is $255 USD. Today that watch lists for $9,250. Adjusted for inflation, $255 in 1970 would be only about $1700 today.

Mechanical watches have become status symbols.

But they haven't become more expensive to make.

Likely this points more to something like the skyrocketing wealth disparity which means $1700 is no longer enough to spend on a veblen good.

Perhaps the handmade ones have due to "Baumol cost disease"; it's highly skilled manual labour, not mechanised production.

Plenty of other watch manufacturers have gone toward partially or completely mechanised assembly of their mechanical watches.

I would guess that, if it hasn't become more mechanised in that time, it's because their margins have grown large enough that there's not much incentive in doing so.

Technically the margins haven’t grown if the cost has also increased.

Well, it depends.

If the sales price increases faster than the costs, then the margins have grown. If the sales price increases slower than the costs, then the margins have shrunk.

I suspect Rolex is a bit victim of the bullshit job culture. I know that their very expensive models are slid in the production schedule with a planning manager.

I would expect that if I paid my watch $10M, either it's been made by a very limited number of artisans on a desk away from the production line, or they just trashily stop the line at random moments to fit my watch as a sign of my importance, but certainly not have paper pushers quickly slide my watch between 2 batches of plebeian $10000 Rolexes.

That seems like a strange way to look at it. If we grant that part of the appeal of a Rolex is that it is out of reach of most people, $1700, adjusted for inflation, was out of reach 50 years ago. Today, a luxury good of that price is well within reach for a middle-to-upper-middle class person who cares to save for a little while. If Rolex raised their price that much to keep it too expensive for the middle class, that seems to imply a greatly increased standard of living for everyone.

> If Rolex raised their price that much to keep it too expensive for the middle class, that seems to imply a greatly increased standard of living for everyone.

But that’s precisely it. The standard of living hasn’t gone up. Only the nominal price of money.

The standard of living has gone up since 1970. But it pretty much leveled out by the 1980’s. So yes, mostly.

I don't know... my anecdotal experience is that the 1980s were noticeably more dreary than the 90s. And although most of the gains in quality of life since then have been in tech, they've been amazing gains. Flat screen TVs, powerful laptops, cellular phones, smart phones... I think what leveled out was the amount and quality of housing and education, which of course are large expenses.

It's more that Rolex are now seen as status symbols and they charge for that premium.

Plenty of mechanical watches can be had for under $500:

http://timetransformed.com/2014/12/27/which-is-the-cheapest-...

The one I'm wearing retails at $1020 and can regularly be picked up for about $850.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com