Because yes, Concorde was wildly profitable by 2000 - winter quarters it was majority of British Airways profit.
The problem with Airbus was that they really wanted Concorde to die (and pretty please buy more A340 and maybe A380 in its place) and the quality of their parts was getting worse - especially vertical stabilizers, which had increasing rate of failures.
911, Patriot Act and TSA changed all that for the worse.
However, it's risky now because airlines are under much more pressure to get flights off the gate, and they'll gladly close the door on you if somehow they have a quick boarding process.
In its latter years Concorde was a revenue earner.
The product evolved into a very expensive thrill ride, sold to the same demographic that would go on cruises. These customers didn't care about a crowded cabin and they would gladly get to the airport extra, extra early. Many of them had promised themselves a trip on Concorde for decades. They were in it for the journey and not the destination.
These flights, e.g. to see 'Santa in Lapland', sold out in advance so there were no empty seats.
The crash in 2000 didn't entirely dampen customer enthusiasm, however, 9/11 came along and it was a different era. Airbus deciding to stop making spares was a convenient get out for BA and Air France.
Flying subsonic requires you to be at the airport 60-90mins before the flight too (though i know some airports have that as low as 45mins).
Still a considerable reduction to the "in the air" time.
He told me that it was a cool experience once. But now, rather than having a relaxed first class meal on an overnight flight [EDITED: He may have taken daytime flights], he was getting into London in the middle of rush hour. He could probably have flown the Concorde had he wanted to but didn't have any real interest in taking it again.
And, today, with modern lie-flat business class and entertainment systems, there's even less reason to fly supersonic IMO, unless you're a CEO, lawyer, investment banker etc. flying from NY to London to have lunch with someone, seal some deal, and be back home for dinner.
But if you arrive in the morning in London, isn’t that rush-hour too?
Taking a 5 day longer trip to save $1800 is equivalent to getting paid $360 per day. If your salary is less than $90,000 per year, you'd be better off taking the ocean liner.
You can get a taste of this when you look at the cost of long distance rail— for example, a trip like The Canadian (four days in total), which VIA understandably sells as a cruise ship type experience rather than practical travel:
https://www.viarail.ca/en/explore-our-destinations/trains/ro...
Obviously some of the cost difference is just the massive economy of scale enjoyed by airlines, but at the end of the day there are certain fixed costs associated with being in their care for such a long period of time. Even with a cheap ticket where you don't get a sleeper bed and have to buy/pack your own food, they still have to staff the train that whole time.
I did take the overnight from London to Edinburgh a year or two ago. It was actually pretty convenient but it still almost certainly cost more than flying.
Honestly, I'd guess that depends on your job function, whether you can work effectively remotely, and the cost of the ticket.
As a remote employee, I can totally see justifying it to my employer. It wouldn't be typical, but if it costs about the same and the trip there and back would involve me getting as much or more done than I normally would... I'd definitely pitch the idea, and don't see any reason why it would be out of the question.
In fact, I'm making a mental note to investigate the cost when/if I need to attend a conference or something in Europe.
(And, yes, business or first class that you actually pay directly out of pocket for is priced like a luxury good. Of course, you can pay a lot more for the cabin too.)
My previous contract had these terms, although I rarely claimed all the time off to which I was entitled. It seemed a bit ridiculous when I'd already bent the travel rules as far as they could go, in order to take a holiday abroad after most trips.
https://www.peninsulagrouplimited.com/guides/travelling-for-...
To me, there's a significant difference between a trip where you can get up at home early in the morning but get to bed in your hotel late the same evening, and one that is even a few hours longer. There is a much less significant difference between that and one a few hours shorter - if i arrive in the early evening, i'm still not going to do much with the day. The next significant difference is when a trip is short enough to do the outbound and return legs in one day, and still have a useful stay. Concorde wasn't quite fast enough to that.
AND teleconferencing. Having a team, and not just CEO/lawyer/ibanker/etc, in NY working with a team in London is far easier today, compared to before the era of cheap video conferencing. Still too far from the real thing, but jetting over to the Atlantic for a quick conversation to clear something up, and coming right back isn't as necessary as it once was.
Coming out of the current situation I certainly hope that travel gets back to some semblance of normal. But I do expect that we'll probably collectively decide that some of the in-person ritual can be cut back on.
He said it was an amazing experience. But he'd never pay for a ticket himself, and the company was pretty tight with expense money, so they weren't going to do it either.
On my last flight between New York and Paris passport control and security didn’t take more than 5 minutes on a European passport (both in Paris and New York).
I think the bigger problem is the time you lose and uncertainty (immigration and traffic) door to door in these big cities, which limits the use-cases and might make an overnight flight or a direct connection from a general aviation airports preferable.
Given the cost premium associated with the Concorde, I seriously doubt if it were flying today passengers would be going through the "regular" TSA lines. The airline would certainly pay for a separate line just for SST passengers with a much shorter delay, and would likely shorten the time between ending boarding and being in the air as much as possible.
Most travelers on an SST wouldn't have checked baggage - the whole point is to get there and back as quickly as possible, after all. It really should be a matter of "arrive, go directly through security, board, and depart".
Regional airlines have much this type of experience today. I can fly from my home town of Harrison, AR to Memphis, TN on Southern Airways for $98 round trip. That's departing Sunday evening and returning Wednesday afternoon. There is no TSA in HRO, and that airline has its own terminal that bypasses TSA in MEM. You can easily arrive ten or fifteen minutes before your flight boards, with checked baggage, and comfortably make it. This is something of a special case - FedEx corporate is in Memphis and Harrison is the general office for one of its subsidiaries, FedEx Freight, so there is probably enough business travel to keep daily service profitable. I believe FedEx also keeps a small number of company cars at the Memphis terminal for employee use. For the airline, Harrison is one of two fuel stops between Dallas and Memphis, so any business they're able to pick up is gravy. It also means that a single person can fly from my small town to Dallas and back on short notice for about the same cost as driving.
Given that domestic regional airlines can offer such fast service today, I don't see why a well-funded premium international route couldn't do the same. It just doesn't make sense to when travel time isn't the selling point.
> On my last flight between New York and Paris passport control and security didn’t take more than 5 minutes on a European passport (both in Paris and New York).
My last international flight was from Virginia to Montreal, and customs on both legs was relatively painless. A previous flight on that route had my group pulled aside going into Canada by customs due to some confusion over the boxes of conference swag we had with us, but even that only took fifteen minutes or so to work out. We shipped it next time.
> I think the bigger problem is the time you lose and uncertainty (immigration and traffic) door to door in these big cities, which limits the use-cases and might make an overnight flight or a direct connection from a general aviation airports preferable.
Yep - while the change in business culture was likely the biggest reason for the demise of transatlantic SST service, the fact that time in the air is just not a big part of overall time spent traveling for most people is why they couldn't shift their market focus.
I flew out of Merced airport a few years ago, on one of four half-full 20-seater flights departing that day. There was one airport or airline employee, who checked me in, took my luggage and then went outside to refuel the plane. For that complement there were six TSA agents in perfectly pressed blue shirts - and I expect six more on the other shift.
In fact, the first time I flew from there to Memphis, I checked a handgun in my luggage. They asked me if it was unloaded, put the little slip in the case... and handed it back to me. I handed it off to an employee for stowage when we boarded - but “stowage” in this case means “behind a cargo net at the rear of the plane, accessible from the cabin.
I may stop by there tomorrow just out of curiosity, to see if anything has changed. I seriously doubt it has; it’s still the same airline. They’re tiny planes - I want to say 12 passengers or so.
I never understood the skip-security and skip exit-control line: those are public services.
They don't offer the service for free.
The only issue with queue-jumping public disservice is that it discourages fixing the problem in the first place.
* Some low-cost airlines (like EasyJet) are pretty much doing just that, their premium membership give you access to priority lanes without any other significant benefit (since they don't really offer any).
* I don't think anyone wants ticketing to get even more complicated. It's obviously a lot easier and more rewarding for airlines to treat their frequent/business flyers well and make everyone else take the slow lines.
* First and business classes don't fill up the planes, airlines are directly impacted by shitty airports that can't embark/disembark/transfer 80% of their passengers (and luggage) quickly enough. You can't say there's zero incentive to fix the problem.
1) it's serviced directly from London City airport, which is tiny, but also closest you can get to the city centre by air
2) because of how short that airport is, BA ordered special shortened Airbus A318 that is only made in a full business class configuration(only 32 seats) and it only ever flies on that one route. And even then it's actually too far for its range, so it makes a quick stop in Ireland to refuel before crossing the Atlantic first.
I'm reasonably certain that paying extra for this special flight saves you more than 90 minutes compared to taking a conventional one from Heathrow, no matter which class you'd travel.
It's only too far for its range when flying from an airfield _with a runway the length of City_. From Heathrow it could do the flight non-stop: it just can't take off with so heavy from City.
Of course Heathrow is also far busier than Shannon and far more likely to have delays.