Originally Posted by
jodeliste
With all due respect Christiaan Im not mistaking operating costs and development costs.
Sorry.
The way your question was formulated didn't make that clear to me.
If I as a company develop and sell a product then its not profitable until all the development costs have been recovered. Operating costs are a matter for the buyer, not the manufacturer.
Exactly.
For the governments and the manufacturers, there was never even a mention of "profits", was there?
The only serious mention of "profits" has always been the BA operation, and they were just one of the 'buyers'.
Even if in the end they acquired two more aircraft (three if you count DG) for relatively nothing, when you start looking at the operating costs over the 27 years, those totally dwarf the initial acquisition costs.
I know the costs were covered by the governments and that was what I was really asking, what was the break even quantity for the manufacturers.
I would really have to do a 'back-of-the-envelope' calculation to extract a break-even quantity from the limited data in the link I posted earlier.
Also, Concorde #17 would already have been a prototype "B" Concorde"... how much of that is included in the development cost figure?
With only 16 production aircraft, we were only just on the start of the "learning curve"... how exactly that would have evolved compared to other aircraft is anybody's guess.
Although, there was a trend already, since the last Concordes off the production line were already a ton lighter than the first ones.
But the original figures, at various stages, for the break-even point were in the order of 100 to 150 airframes, IIRC.
Obviously the benefits to the existence and technological advance of Airbus is a separate and unquantifyable matter
Unquantifiable in money terms, yes.
In terms of years lost, maybe not entirely.
I'll have to look up all the dates. But if Concorde had been "nipped in the bud", I would guess we would have lost ten years of experience in cooperation in development and manufacture.
In a roundabout way, look at the cancellation of the Boeing 2707 SST in 1971.
The figures at the time showed that the US had spent almost exactly the same amount on SST development as had been spent for Concorde at the same time.
For that, Boeing had a hangar-full of design drawings, a couple of nice-looking wooden mock-ups, and a few test articles for the swing-wing.
At the same date, we already had two prototypes and a pre-prod aircraft flying, and the production line getting under way.
What did we gain? Only a few Concordes, but also a European aircraft industry capable of meeting Boeing on its own terms.
What did Boeing gain? Some swing-wing design experience for the B1.. and even that wasn't much use... look at the B1-B.
CJ