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Re: Concorde
It seems that as far as commercial airliners are concerned, subsonic widebody will continue its dominance for the forseeable future. I am no expert but from various articles the design and manufacture of a supersonic airliner is an order of magnitude more difficult than a subsonic widebody, which in itself is not exactly a doddle. People are used to, and expect, relatively low air fares and I can't see them being willing to pay, say, 5 or more times the cost in order to cut flight time in half, assuming supersonic flight over land was permitted. Yes, maybe some top business people and the very rich would pay, but in today's market would any manufacturer be willing to invest the truly enormous costs to bring a supersonic airliner into production, given that numbers built would still be small--20 Concordes were built, only 14 being used for commercial flights by BA and AF, and that is a woefully small number in today's market.
It seems that as far as commercial airliners are concerned, subsonic widebody will continue its dominance for the forseeable future. I am no expert but from various articles the design and manufacture of a supersonic airliner is an order of magnitude more difficult than a subsonic widebody, which in itself is not exactly a doddle. People are used to, and expect, relatively low air fares and I can't see them being willing to pay, say, 5 or more times the cost in order to cut flight time in half, assuming supersonic flight over land was permitted. Yes, maybe some top business people and the very rich would pay, but in today's market would any manufacturer be willing to invest the truly enormous costs to bring a supersonic airliner into production, given that numbers built would still be small--20 Concordes were built, only 14 being used for commercial flights by BA and AF, and that is a woefully small number in today's market.
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