Concorde...

[Charlie911]

Progress is progress but I cannot understand why Concorde could fly you over to USA or Aussie in no time but nowdays because of progress there is no Concorde and it takes blasted ages and ages and when flying to Australia I had to have a day in some god foresaken place. I just wanted to fly there asap!!

[AlBags]

lol Meg : )

[Meg]

The young couple then moved to behind the school gym. He found them there as well.

[Hopkirk]

Concorde was never economically viable.

The Americans realised this and cancelled their SST programme.

Us foolish Europeans sunk millions into it, and flushed the chain.

[Andyvon]

Although Concorde was a joint project with France, it was probably the last industrial development that Britain could be proud of. It was way ahead of anything else in the world (the Tu 144 notwithstanding). The US were really upset when the Boeing SST proved too heavy to fly and had to be scrapped, yet Concorde marched ahead supreme. It was widely accepted at the time that if the Boeing aircraft had gone into service it would never have been banned from flying over the USA or other parts of the world's landmasses. The Americans scuppered the TSR2 (they poached the hundreds of orders from Europe and beyond by offering free F-104s and spares provided those nations bought the F-16 in the 70s). They tried to ban Concorde from landing at New York. They eventually gave way on that, but they still pressured other nations not to allow it to fly supersonic over them. Special relationship indeed Mr. Cameron!

At the end of the day, with fuel increases, global recession, 9/11 etc., Concorde no longer made money. The trend now is simply economy of scale - to cram 'bums on seats' in 747s, Airbus 340s and 380s etc. Just think of the old airships crossing the Atlantic. Passengers had separate cabins, showers, a restaurant, a palm court with grand piano, and a promenade deck. Nowadays, luxury seems to be a few extra inches of leg and seat space, an 'air bed', a TV screen, china plates and a bottle of bubbly!

Along with starting to lose money, BA stopped flying Concorde because France refused to make any more spares. France want everyone to fly Airbus.

[GrumpyPom]

It is strange though that we will be able to say to our kids and Grandkids that we used to cross the Atlantic quicker in the good old days !!!!