The Aer Lingus Concord

OU812

Lads,

Obviously, it's not real, but does anyone know the story behind the EI Livery Concord on this real Phone Card from the early 90s?



I figured if anyone knew anything about it it would be the good people in here.

robyntmorton

Point out the date and landing. It’s taking off, on April Fools Day.

Still a good card though. My dad has one in his phone card collection.

Tenger

Odd nugget of info;
EI were one of the airlines who paid a deposit for the planned Boeing supersonic aircraft. (The B2707) This program was axed quite early, the 2 prototypes never flew. The cockpit and fuselage of one prototype was in a museum in California for a few years.

robyntmorton

Tenger wrote: »

Odd nugget of info;
EI were one of the airlines who paid a deposit for the planned Boeing supersonic aircraft. This program was axed quite early, the prototype never flew.

That’s something I didn’t know. Learn something new every day and all that!

Skyknight

Tenger,
Your right, they had 2 options for the Boeing 2707.

flaneur

Unless there's some way of going supersonic and burning a lot less fuel, I can't really see there being any demand for it again.
Aviation changed entirely and even with the 1970s / 80s model, Concorde never found a market beyond two 'national champions' who were more or less compelled to use it.

Nice plane, but not much of a business model.

Irish Steve

So many misconceptions in that last post.

The issues that's still not really resolved with supersonic flight is the sonic boom over land, which can cause damage to buildings on the ground, and it w was used to condemn the aircraft, especially by the Americans, who were massively jealous that they'd not been able to design and build it themselves, and despite stealing much of the Concorde design information, the Russians were also not able to get their equivalent to operate with the success of Concorde, the TU144 was unable to cruise at supersonic speeds without using reheat, which imposed a massive fuel penalty on it.

If the boom issue could be resolved, there would be interest in a modern SST, the design of Concorde is ancient by current standards, yet it was capable of being operated over a range of heights and speeds that no other commercial aircraft has been able to sustain, and it did it on a regular basis. Yes, because of the time when it was built, there were range restrictions, among other things, a modern design would remove many of the limitations of the original machine.

Yes, due to the aerodynamic shape, it needed massive (reheat) power to get airborne compared to subsonic types, and needed reheat to transition from subsonic to supersonic speeds, but once in the air, or at supersonic speeds, it was not massively expensive on fuel compared to similar types of the same generation, especially when you consider that the engines on Concorde were a derivative of an engine that was designed over 60 years ago, and engine design has changed massively since that time.

The sonic boom problem is probably not going to be resolved easily, if it can be resolved, as it's one of those things that's part of the immutable laws of physics, so none of the aircraft makers are spending much time or money on even trying to design, let alone build a modern version of anything supersonic, but I suspect if NASA, or another organisation of their standing were to announce they'd found a way to deal with the boom issue, there would be considerable research and work carried out to look again at getting commercial supersonic flight into the air again.

Noxegon

Personally I’m watching what happens with Boom Aerospace.

flaneur

In this day and age it has to make economic sense.

Concorde was scuppered to a degree by the technical limitations around sonic booms making trans continental routes impossible. However, there was nothing to stop other carriers using it on point to point transatlantic or pacific routes.

I don’t really buy the “not made here” argument as

Airbus does very well in the US and Japan hasn’t really made a serious entry into the passenger aviation space. Previous European airliners like the Aviation Sud Caravelle also saw use with United Airlines Etc etc There may have been a bit of that but US airlines are and always were commercial companies and bought what was commerically logical.

European flag carriers often didn’t have to make economic sense in those days as they’d be bailed out / state aided and that is why BA and AF were the only Concorde equipped airlines in the end.

Had Concorde made business sense, someone would have bought in. There’s no question about that. So clearly something didn’t add up or it was extremely poorly marketed, which I doubt as it was shown off with great presentations and really caught the public imagination. It was a fantastic looking aircraft by any standards.

You’re looking at a plane that entered serious commercial service in 1976 and the oil crisis hit in 1979.
Even by 1970s standards, Concorde was a gas guzzler and carried very few people for the amount of fuel it drank.

It was also the start of mass market long haul and the end of the glory days of luxury travel made way for true mass market travel that has continued to be more about cost per passenger per km a above all else.

If someone can come up with modern, fuel efficient Concorde like aircraft, even with the booms, I think it would have a business case.

Fattes

flaneur wrote: »

European flag
Had Concorde made business sense, someone would have bought in.

Virgin tried to Neither AF or BA would sell them to them, they offered 5million per airframe. Considering BA & AF paid £1 per airframe that was a significant profit!

BA were turning a profit with Concorde of around 20-40 million a year so the service was financially viable.

Pretty sure Airbus stopped making and servicing pets for her too, which was probably the biggest issue

plodder

flaneur wrote: »

If someone can come up with modern, fuel efficient Concorde like aircraft, even with the booms, I think it would have a business case.

That's debatable. The very high take-off speed needs huge engine power and creates a lot of noise.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3581192.stm

Maybe, improved engine technology could deal with that. But, I doubt the boom issue can be solved and even back in the day, when all planes were noisy, Concorde was not allowed to fly supersonic over builtup areas. I remember in college in the 80’s, Concorde was (literally) a text-book example of poor business cases. Spectacular sight to see though, and I do wonder if the present day success of Airbus is owed in part at least, to the multi-national, multi-lingual experience gained in the development of Concorde.

Henry Ford III

I'm not so sure that the sonic boom issue is such a big issue. Concorde used to go supersonic over water and still achieved massive speeds and consequent reductions in journey times.

The big questions are:-

1/. What differences would modern technology make to an all new SST? Concorde was an amazing development for it's time, but the game has moved on a lot since.
2/. What appetite is there to develop such an aircraft. Would the cost be prohibitive?
3/. Could a modern SST be economically viable? What demand might there be?

Big questions.

Captain_Crash

flaneur wrote: »

Nice plane, but not much of a business model.

While ultimately the retirement of the aircraft was a financial decision, up until 9/11 it made a killing for both AF and BA.

In the mid 1980's BA completed a survey of passengers and asked how much they thought they were paying (bare in mind that most travelers were business execs and not booking their own tickets). What they found was that many passengers believed they were paying a lot more than they were actually being charged... so what did BA do......? Bring the price up to what frequent flyers thought they were paying, and made an even bigger killing!

Then 9/11 happened, Gulf War II, AF4590, Oil crisis... it could have survived one, or even two of those scenarios... but all 4 together killed it

Dardania

Henry Ford III wrote: »

I'm not so sure that the sonic boom issue is such a big issue. Concorde used to go supersonic over water and still achieved massive speeds and consequent reductions in journey times.

The big questions are:-

1/. What differences would modern technology make to an all new SST? Concorde was an amazing development for it's time, but the game has moved on a lot since.
2/. What appetite is there to develop such an aircraft. Would the cost be prohibitive?
3/. Could a modern SST be economically viable? What demand might there be?

Big questions.

Your first question is a really interesting one. Giving it a go as an absolute arm chair knowledge exercise, and considering an update of the Concorde's configuration:

- Materials. CRFP is dramatically better understood nowadays compared to the 60s. Might enable significant lightness in a modern day Concorde, with resultant improvement to efficiency, as there's less weight to keep aloft. And maybe not a need for reheat to take off, or accelerate through the trans sonic range...

- fly by wire. While original Concorde had this (one of the first I think?) it might be sufficiently understood that the drooping nose couldbe dispensed with, and a camera for ground movements / landing be used in lieu. Big weight saving.
Also, this may help with sonic boom - the shape of the wing on Concorde was all about avoiding the sonic boom shockwave while still providing enough lift and control authority. Maybe there are less stable wing designs possible that can be allied with cutting edge FBW, to mitigate some effects of sonic boom

- geared turbo fans. It seems the use of gearboxes in high power applications is gathering steam. Maybe it's possible to design a GTF that can cope with both subsonic and supersonic regimes better than the Concorde's approach of damper doors tied to a turbo jet- I know subsonic GTFs are all about allowing the fan rotate slower than the turbine, to maximise their efficiencies, but maybe with pitch angle adjustment, it would be possible to use a GTF turbo fan, and the resultant better fuel efficiency from not needing reheat? From looking at the Olympus' power outputs, they don't seem crazy in a modern context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce/Snecma_Olympus_593#Specifications_.28Olympus_593_Mk_610.29


For development costs and then later market - this is where it falls down. Long Haul & Ultra Long Haul business routes seem to be where it could suit best - if the sonic boom issue were addressed.

flaneur

I assume subsonic to sea and then boom.
It used to rattle windows on the south coast of Ireland btw

martinsvi

Irish Steve wrote: »

The sonic boom problem is probably not going to be resolved easily, if it can be resolved, as it's one of those things that's part of the immutable laws of physics, so none of the aircraft makers are spending much time or money on even trying to design, let alone build a modern version of anything supersonic, but I suspect if NASA, or another organisation of their standing were to announce they'd found a way to deal with the boom issue, there would be considerable research and work carried out to look again at getting commercial supersonic flight into the air again.

they are actually working on it and have made some significant progress with pelican shaped noses on F5 - https://www.nasa.gov/aero/sonic_boom_takes_shape.html

Lockheed Martin won a contract last year to develop a new design for NASA
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/mar/01/next-concorde-nasa-kickstarts-quesst-for-new-supersonic-passenger-jet

if the design will prove itself in wind tunnels, they hope to build a single seat prototype as early as 2021

ironclaw

flaneur wrote: »

I assume subsonic to sea and then boom.
It used to rattle windows on the south coast of Ireland btw

Distinctly remember hearing it at the holiday home in Waterford

Turbulent Bill

It's unlikely that the economics will ever stack up to make a new Concorde viable. A large proportion of the passengers were wealthy business people attending meetings, where the time savings were worth the price. Lots of those meetings are now online, so people don't have to travel as much.

Fantastic advances in technology made Concorde possible, and ironically also caused its downfall.

hurleronditch

Turbulent Bill wrote: »

It's unlikely that the economics will ever stack up to make a new Concorde viable. A large proportion of the passengers were wealthy business people attending meetings, where the time savings were worth the price. Lots of those meetings are now online, so people don't have to travel as much.

Fantastic advances in technology made Concorde possible, and ironically also caused its downfall.

Has anyone ever provided any statistics to back up this "people are traveling less for business" spiel that gets trotted out frequently?
You say that people don't have to travel as much for business, yet given there has been consistent year on year increases in the number of flights flown globally, with the majority of premium/legacy carriers increasing rather than decreasing the sizes of their premium cabins, what makes you believe people are traveling less for business? Whilst some of the expansion in global travel is budget airlines driven, look at a business class cabin in any medium or long haul flight, and it is generally quite full. Whilst not all of those would be willing to pay $5k plus per ticket as i imagine it would be now to fly SS, i think an awful lot of business travelers are paying in that domain for business flights on a regular basis. I recently flew NY-LA and back in a 24 hour round trip for meetings, payed quite a chunk sum and wasted 12 or 13 hours in the air. A non-sonic boom concorde replacement would likely have saved me 7-8 hours of that.  Whilst my company probably wouldn't have covered that cost increase (my time isn't that valuable), plenty would. Yes you can do online meetings, video calling, webex presentations etc, and these cut out some travel, these largely make previous conference calls and internal meetings within international companies more efficient. if you need to go 4,000 miles to meet a possible new customer or do some work with an existing one, and would pay $3000 to do it in business class in 6 hours, plenty of people would happily have their company pay $6000 to do it in less than 3 hours.

Turbulent Bill

I think a present-day supersonic ticket would be a lot more than 2x the subsonic business-class price. From a quick Google, Concorde ticket prices were in the thousands when subsonic business tickets were in the hundreds, and that's on aircraft with no R&D costs to amortise. I'd love to see what a modern Concorde ticket price would be, but it wouldn't be pretty.

hurleronditch

Turbulent Bill wrote: »

I think a present-day supersonic ticket would be a lot more than 2x the subsonic business-class price. From a quick Google, Concorde ticket prices were in the thousands when subsonic business tickets were in the hundreds, and that's on aircraft with no R&D costs to amortise. I'd love to see what a modern Concorde ticket price would be, but it wouldn't be pretty.

In 2003 Concorde tickets for JFK-LHR were generally around $4-5k each way, and sometimes cheaper than that, with the rack rate going up to $10k at busy periods/short notice. Picking a quiet week in march its around $4.5k return to fly first class BA LHR-JFK return, but traveling in the next two weeks is at least $10k. Im not saying its a slam dunk, but with 10 BA flights a day (plus many more operated by other airlines), id struggle with the concept that you couldn't fill 2-3 concords per day on that route with prices in the $15k return bracket from the people currently paying a good chunk of that to fly slow first and business.

It probably will never happen, as the R&D costs to make sustainable, boom free comfortable reliable passenger jet that can cruise supersonic for 6000 miles plus would be eye watering, but id be pretty certain that there is a business travel market that would underpin it, even if you were charging $15-20k return on these legs. Fix the fuel capacity & boom challenges and you bring things like London-SYD in 8 hours with 1 fuel stop, New York - California in 2.5 hours non stop, europe to HK, Singapore, california etc in 4-5 hours, and you would have business people jumping at flying these routes in half the time.

beauf

Captain_Crash wrote: »

While ultimately the retirement of the aircraft was a financial decision, up until 9/11 it made a killing for both AF and BA.

In the mid 1980's BA completed a survey of passengers and asked how much they thought they were paying (bare in mind that most travelers were business execs and not booking their own tickets). What they found was that many passengers believed they were paying a lot more than they were actually being charged... so what did BA do......? Bring the price up to what frequent flyers thought they were paying, and made an even bigger killing!

Then 9/11 happened, Gulf War II, AF4590, Oil crisis... it could have survived one, or even two of those scenarios... but all 4 together killed it

I thought it was the Paris crash that put a final end to it. Were they not after modernizing it at the time that happened?

Tenger

beauf wrote: »

I thought it was the Paris crash that put a final end to it. Were they not after modernizing it at the time that happened?

BA I believe had revamped their Concorde product just before the Paris crash. This grounded both fleets.
They eventually got back in the air with newer safety mods in place. (Incidentally the BA airframes already had strengthened fuel tanks before the crash)
The gap in opetation meant the market haf to be revived. Geo politics in the Middle East impacted the entire industry.
The nail in the coffin was Airbus announcing that they were ending technical support for the type.

beauf

I remember seeing a revamped and modernised cabin.

Davidth88

Remember Concorde well. Used to live near Heathrow when growing up and was a keen aviation enthusiast with a lot of mates who flew and still fly for BA.
They made money out of Concorde for sure until Airbus pulled the plug. Air France always struggled even at the peak they didn't keep all their airframes airworthy.

Various stories abounded about staff members getting flights home from new York on the pocket rocket because their leave was due to start etc.

As for the future... it was criminal that one was not kept airworthy I think one in France is kept with liquids in etc and is the closest but the one at Heathrow for example had it's engines ripped out and concrete put in as ballast.

My theory always was that it was missing 6 magic letters on it's side namely .....BOEING the I'll fated Braniff thing sort of proved that. But maybe that is a bitter Englishman ( me) speaking

Captain_Crash

Tenger wrote: »

The nail in the coffin was Airbus announcing that they were ending technical support for the type.

Technically they never ended support, they just more than doubled the price

Tabnabs

This news story may be of interest to this thread:

Denver-based startup Boom Supersonic has won a $10 million investment from Japan Airlines Co Ltd (9201.T) in its push to build a supersonic passenger aircraft it claims will be faster, quieter and more affordable to fly than the Concorde.

Boom has 76 pre-orders for a 55-seat plane that it says will be able to slash the flight time from New York to London in just three hours and fifteen minutes.

The firm has said its jetliner, expected to enter service by the mid 2020s, will fly at speeds of Mach 2.2, 10 percent faster than the British-French joint-venture Concorde, which popularized supersonic jet travel in the 1970s.

Japan’s second largest airline has the option to purchase up to 20 Boom aircraft and will assist efforts to hone the aircraft’s design and passenger experience, the companies said on Tuesday.

It is the first commercial airline to back the venture with investment. Virgin Atlantic is among airlines to have placed pre-orders with Boom, 14 years after the final flight of the Concorde, to date the world’s fastest passenger airplane.

Industry figures are still debating whether regular supersonic flights, banned over the United States in 1973 by the Federal Aviation Administration, are feasible around modern cities due to the shock waves from the sonic booms the planes create.

Boom says its aircraft, priced at $200 million, will produce a sonic boom at least 30 times quieter than the Concorde, which was also dogged by high operating costs and fuel consumption and low capacity utilization.

Boom estimates that fares for its aircraft would be 75 percent lower than the Concorde and comparable to current business class tickets, due to better fuel efficiency.

General Electric Co (GE.N), Honeywell International Inc (HON.N) and Netherlands-based TenCate Advanced Composites are among suppliers for Boom’s supersonic jets.

It has raised $51 million in backing so far from venture capital firms 8VC, RRE, Lightbank, Y Combinator and Caffeinated Capital, as well as angel investors including Sam Altman, Paul Graham and Greg McAdoo.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-boom-japan-airlines/japan-airlines-invests-10-million-in-supersonic-jet-company-boom-idUSKBN1DZ1N2