What are Boeing's plans?

On Sat, 18 Sep 2004 at 10:07:50 in message
, Peter Stickney
wrote:

Without a doubt, for revenue service. An inflight emergency on the
San Fran-Hawaii leg would have meant a lost airplane due to fuel
exhaustion, in most cases. Plus, even the shorter legs are still
damned long - Even if you duplicated the route of the Pan Am flying
boats - San Francisco-Honolulu-Midway-Wake-Manila-Hong Kong -
it's still unworkable wrt safety, and the stops would have added
tremendously to the travel time, annoyed the passengers, and shortened
the life of the airframes.

I am pretty sure that a Concorde flying from London to New York could
be forced to descend halfway across to subsonic cruise and still make
the destination. As I recall it was postulated that it might
occasionally be necessary due to a sudden upsurge of Solar radiation.
Radiation levels were monitored on the aircraft. A loss of one engine
could also be dealt with in the same way.

Just dug out a Concorde brochure, written when they still optimistically
hoped to sell many and fly them all around the world.

Pacific routes are included as follows

West Coast of USA; Anchorage, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San
Diego and Acapulco were all shown as legs to Honolulu. Onward links from
Honolulu were to Tokyo and to Auckland and Sydney via a stop at Nandi.

West Coast USA to Australia in 2 stops - that's all.

Other routes include London to Vancouver and Los Angeles via Churchill
in Canada and flown subsonic over the USA to Los Angeles.

I am not convinced that the subsonic range of Concorde was
significantly different from the supersonic range.

--
David CL Francis

"David CL Francis" wrote in message
...
Just dug out a Concorde brochure, written when they still optimistically
hoped to sell many and fly them all around the world.

Pacific routes are included as follows

West Coast of USA; Anchorage, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San
Diego and Acapulco were all shown as legs to Honolulu. Onward links from
Honolulu were to Tokyo and to Auckland and Sydney via a stop at Nandi.

West Coast USA to Australia in 2 stops - that's all.

If any more Concordes had been made, they would have been the
"B" model. These would have had leading edge devices and other
high lift tricks to lower take-off and lading speed. They also had
more efficient engines. They apparently would have used 30% less
fuel, giving the plane a longer range (I'm not sure I have this absolutely
right, I'm quoting from my memory of reading Brian Trubshaw's
autobiography).

Regarding paying back of the design costs, it may well have happened
if the airlines had taken up the 70+ options they initially specified.

Of course, as has been mentioned, the venture as a whole continues
to pay in the guise of Airbus.

Paul