The concept was good. If I could get to Paris in five hours not ten, it would be a lot more attractive, even at a very high price. (I have reached the age where money is far easier to get than time.)
It turns out that there were some regulatory obstacles in the way as well. Trump decided to fix that. He is directing repeal of the ban on cross-country supersonic travel. My recollection is that part of what crippled Concorde was that it could not provide transcontinentsl service. Imagine Los Angeles to NYC in 90 minutes. (From one leftist hell to another too quick to watch a movie.) One with longer range could make LA to London a relatively tolerable trip.
I remember news coverage of neo-Luddites protests of the Concorde's arrival at JFK because of noise. The coverage included the delightful fact that the protesters did not notice its arrival. We're they actually upset about noise? Or technology?
I flew the Concorde once: JFK to LON. I was not that impressed. The flight was LAX-JFK, then JFK to LON. It was the fastest way to get there, and someone else was paying the tab.
ReplyDeleteThe good: The flight was shortish. The food was very good for airline food. The service was excellent.
The Indifferent: Being a fighter pilot, going Mach2 was not an 'experience' for me. Meh. Also, the Concorde only flew supersonic for about an hour, after it burned off sufficient fuel. Then it had to start slowing down to land.
The bad: The cabin was small. Not much headroom, and the seats were narrow. I'm 6'3 and 200 or so back then. Considering the ticket was about 4x the regular BA first class fare, that was kind of disappointing. But, it was a shorter trip than usual.
The trip back was direct to Los Angeles, Delta, first class. Almost as luxurious, somewhat more comfortable. And in checking on the BA Concorde flight back to JFK that I would have taken, it was diverted to Gander, Newfoundland due to unexpected headwinds: I got to LA faster than the Concorde got to JFK.
The new SSTs will have far more efficient engines (the concorde engines were very 1950s tech, less sophisticated than those I flew with F4 Phantoms), and an aerodynamic design that minimizes sonic booms. This is good. Will it be economically efficient enough to fly milk runs like LAX/JFK? We'll see. Of course, it will still have to interact with the current, lower level, and slow regular traffic at each end.
I suspect that there will be supersonic business jets first, with intercontinental range. Because time is certainly more important than money for certain businesses, and there is of course the ego factor of certain business execs.
Bring back sonic booms. I miss them.
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