Talk:Concorde

How many Concorde passenger flights?
Article says 55 for Tu-144.

I’m sure it’s on Google somewhere but I can’t find it.

Estimate? 2 per week? 27 years? 2700 flights?

MBG02 (talk) 06:31, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
 * On this forum there is an educated guess of 100.000 flights.--BIL (talk) 18:19, 21 January 2022 (UTC)


 * I gotta get better at this searching stuff. (That was easy, with "British Airways"). (Of course, unnecessary if it's on Wiki).
 * British Airways Concorde made just under 50,000 flights and flew more than 2.5m passengers supersonically.


 * I was thinking (later) that it must've been over 2 flights per week. So, 100k flights, 74 per week average. Must've often been around 200 pw. MBG02 (talk) 09:22, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Still haven't found it.

This site says 50,000 flights (in total).

This site  implies 50,000 too; and (if I read it correctly) says 1 round trip per day by Air France, and 2 by British Airways  => 42 flights per week for most of 1976-2000 => 24.5 years => 53.6k flights.

MBG02 (talk) 17:50, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

I read somewhere ages ago that each and every flight was subsidised by taxpayers by several hundred euros, and so it never made any real profit. Article is poor on the real economics of it, and also its contribution to future technology.— ⦿⨦⨀Tumadoireacht Talk/Stalk 11:27, 21 February 2022 (UTC)


 * Well what you read was wrong.
 * Initial British Airways flights before privatisation charged a fare rate of 'First Class plus 20% Supersonic tariff' and due to the low take-up (many potential passengers thought that fares were much higher than they were in reality) did not produce a profit. After privatisation in 1987 British Airways (BA) management raised Concorde fares to what the market would pay, most of Concorde's passengers being businessmen who's fare was being paid by their employers. BA from then on made a profit on their Concorde operations such that BA's seven Concordes were eventually generating 25% of BA's net profits.
 * Taxpayer subsidies stopped upon BA privatisation in 1987.
 * Just prior to the the halt in Concorde operations in 2003 BA had been studying a 10-year Life Extension programme to continue flying Concorde until 2013. Operations were not stopped because BA didn't want to continue using Concorde, quite the reverse, otherwise they would not have spent over £1,000,000 per-aircraft on the Kevlar fuel tank liners. 86.8.126.91 (talk) 11:35, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Sunrise in the West
Should add that Concorde flew faster than the earth spins and would catch-up with the sunset, so passengers could see the sun rise in the West [ https://www.aerosociety.com/news/concorde-contemplatio Fig (talk) 17:55, 11 July 2023 (UTC)n] .
 * See WP:TRIVIA. - Ahunt (talk) 18:13, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

XB70 converted for commercial use (?)
Recently released document conclude that plans were drawn up for converting the XB70 to passenger use. I would like to edit the paragraph on the xb70 to Includes this.. . Any objections Jacob805 Jacob805 (talk) 06:10, 1 October 2023 (UTC)


 * What are your sources? BilCat (talk) 08:22, 1 October 2023 (UTC)


 * How? There are only 2 prototypes built and they are on display now.-Fnlayson (talk) 14:29, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
 * The conversion was in the design stage, it was mentioned in a recent documentary on British TV. Needs a proper source for addition here. Murgatroyd49 (talk) 11:07, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
 * OK, but that's a derivative design, not a simple conversion as implied. -Fnlayson (talk) 14:58, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Adapting might be a better word than converting. Murgatroyd49 (talk) 11:49, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

920,000 flying hours, over 600,000 supersonic, by March 1999?
Although this claim added in 2009 seems to be as stated in Jane's (https://web.archive.org/web/20100806140324/http://www.janes.com/transport/news/jae/jae000725_1_n.shtml), and appears elsewhere on the Internet, it is not consistent with the hours planes flew in the article (a total to retirement in 2003 of under 244,000 hours).

Nor does it make sense with an airframe design life of 45,000 flying hours (even if all 20 planes built did this number of hours it would not get to the total - and 5 did less than 1,000 flying hours).

(I wonder if Jane's actually intended to refer to engine hours rather than plane hours.)

Also is there an estimate anywhere of total supersonic hours flown in the western world, as that bit could be true? Robertm25 (talk) 17:15, 8 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Well spotted! The claims of 920k hours and 600k hours are definitely implausible for the reasons you have given. I have looked at the website you provided immediately above. It is focussed on the Olympus engine so I agree with you that the hours quoted are likely engine hours, not airframe hours. Dolphin ( t ) 01:06, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Maximum speed
The maximum speed says in the first line "1,354 mph (2,179 km/h (...))" (which is btw only a few mi/km above the indicated cruising speed) but in the second titled the same it is "Mach 2.04" (which according to Google is around 2450 km/h, or 2518 km/h by another source). Anyone to clarify this (relatively glaring inconsistency for an awarded article)? Martin Gazdík (talk) 13:11, 14 March 2024 (UTC)


 * The speed of sound varies depending on the altitude at which the vehicle is operating. I'm not a physicist, so I don't understand all the nuances, but I believe it has something to do with the thinner air at higher altitudes. 1995hoo (talk) 13:56, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
 * The speed of sound does not vary depending on altitude, although this fact regularly puzzles most people. It can be proved that the speed of sound varies with the temperature of the air. At progressively higher altitudes the air temperature decreases (at the rate of approximately 2 degrees Celsius every 1,000 feet.) As a consequence of the decline in air temperature with increasing altitude, the speed of sound also declines with altitude. In the stratosphere the temperature remains approximately constant regardless of altitude so, in this part of the atmosphere, the speed of sound also remains approximately constant.
 * All aircraft have a maximum indicated airspeed specified in knots, kilometres per hour, etc. Jet-engine aircraft and other high-flying and high-speed aircraft also have a maximum Mach number. At low altitudes the limit on indicated airspeed is the more restrictive of the two so it is the one the pilot must monitor closely; at high altitudes the limit on Mach number is the more restrictive so it is the one the pilot must monitor more closely. Dolphin ( t ) 13:36, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

Add a Aircraft of comparable role, configuration, and era?
I tried today to add this template, but ended up just messing up the See also area and I gave up, but I would love to have this in the article. I'm thinking Boeing 2707, Tu-144, and the Lockheed L-2000 to be added. Forevernewyes (talk) 01:18, 20 March 2024 (UTC)


 * In practice there is just the Tupelov, the others never left the drawing board. Murgatroyd49 (talk) 08:44, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Ive seen many real planes have the "See also" section have drawing board planes, also both had mockups made of them, so i see that as pretty reasonable to add. Just a thought A-37Dragonfly (talk) 23:53, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
 * It should also be mentioned that the B-2707 had been developed for several years, and had a mockup built like the L-2000. A-37Dragonfly (talk) 00:05, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
 * How is that in any way relevant to this article? Congress pulled the plug before a prototype was even assembled, much less flew. We don’t need to lard up every article with trivia. 1995hoo (talk) 01:16, 18 May 2024 (UTC)