How many times does it have to be said? The taxpayer sold their stake in Concorde when BA was privatised, and the government (on the taxpayers behalf) made a very healthy profit thank you very much. The only people who have any say in the BA aircrafts future are BA and its shareholders, not Joe Public and certainly not publicity hungry airline tycoons.

Interesting. Twenty years ago Mr. Branson was called a "lunatic". Now its "publicity hungry airline tycoon". Quite an improvement.

Why is the most innotave civil aircraft of our time being handled so badly???
BA hates Virgin so no chance there! European dont make me laugh! they are having enough troubles of their own let alone start a new fleet from scratch.

I think we must accept the fact that the old girl will retire and the arguments about this will go on forever.

Shame as Tony Carn had the right idea..... let everyone have a go coz it was my mother and father who paid for this aircraft with their taxes and the idea of giving this up because BA was privitised is stupid!.

Give it to the frieght dogs and let us do mach 2 from STN to anywhere!!!!:ok:

Sorry, but who knows how much fuel concorde burns per hour?

And, therefore, exactly how profitable is it to run on a REAL long haul route - i.e. Europe to Australia?

I know many people that would pay more than double to cut a 24 hour flight in half - many, MANY more people than I know who would pay double (or more) to cut a 6 hour flight in half.

Maybe QANTAS should buy it?

Or Virgin Blue?

Or, in fact, Stoddart - a forward thinking, business oriented Aussie, after all...

:)

At best Concorde would take 18hrs to fly from the UK to Australia with 2 tech stops. (Bahrain and Singapore etc..)

18hrs in the small cabin of Concorde against 24 hrs in first class or club class, is a no brainer.

Concorde could be classsed as a short haul jet flying medium haul routes.

Very few people would pay to fly that sort of route, you could pick up a few pax that would only fly one of the sectors, but not enough to make it pay.

BA tried this with the 2 sectors out to Singapore in the lates 70's early 80s'. It lost shed loads and in the end was never extended all the way to Australia.

gordonroxburgh,

sorry, but please excuse my incredibly crude (late night) calculations;

london - sydney = 9156.74 Nm

Concorde cruise = 1,336 mph (2,150 kph/Mach 2); 1160.95 Nm/ph
(http://www.britishairways.com/flight...ocs/conc.shtml)

= lhr - syd 7.887 hours

= MAX 10 hours (including 1 hour aircraft interchange (i.e. second aircraft), assorted random delaying factors: hell, say 11 hours...)

?

cjp

CJP
 

The problem with your calculations is your assumption that the aircraft will be able to maintain supersonic cruise all the way. That is far from true I'm afraid.


Regards
Exeng

BA CONCORDE disposals
 

I refer to a recent newspaper article I just turned over..

The Guardian 25th June 2003 suggested a shortlist of locations for the BA Concorde "new homes".

*Seattle Musuem of flight
*Washington Smithsonian musuem (already have an AF model!)
*Science Museum London
*Terminal 5 LHR

But what about the model G-CONC that proudly sits on the entry/exit to the LHR tunnel?

The LAST scheduled revenue BA service will be ex-JFK 0700hrs LT on 24th October 2003.

cjp

There are essentially 3 X 4hrs+ sectors:

London -> Bahrain (some of it subsonic)
Bahrain -> Singapore (again right at the aircraft range so 4hrs)
Singapore -> Sydney

As some pax would be on and off during the different sectors you will need to allow 1.5 hrs, for the turnaround.

Threfore we have 3 X 5.5 = 16.5 approx, it could be less, it could be more.

Ok, 4 hours per sector, 3 sectors.

I think though that we can count on some priority handling on the ground? Ryanair style, this could could cut the trip down to 13.5 hours LHR-SYD.

Compare this with Qantas' best offering, 21.25 hours LHR-SYD.

Though, the Concorde will get roughly 17 miles to the gallon per passenger, compared to 93 on a 747-400? That's roughly 5.5 times more expensive...

What kind of 'priority handling' on the ground did you have in mind? Concorde gets all the priority handling it can at LHR these days, but if you think you could get a turnaround time below 1.5 hours with passenger changes then there are some very hard working handling staff who'd just love to meet you - and your time machine! Frankly I'd take 21 hours in first class with some horizontal rest than 15 hours sitting upright in a narrow body. Anyway, given that BA generally needs to utilise a back-aircraft to protect the daily JFK service you might find you need an in-situ back up aircraft at Heathrow, Bahrain, Singapore and Sydney, plus the one thats operating the outbound service and one operating the inbound. Thats six aircraft, and we only have five airworthy ones!