why did they actually ground the concord?

Question

fom childhood my wish has always been to travel with it>

can't they find a way of bringing it back.?

Answer 1

The accident in Paris was just the last straw really. The Concorde had not been making money for years. It was expensive to operate and not many passengers were in that much of a hurry to pay the extra. Then they had a couple of accidents and they just couldn't justify the expense involved in maintaining these old, expensive aircraft when they weren't profitable.

The Concorde never lived up to it's promise because nobody wanted the noisy beast flying over populated areas. That meant it was limited to flying transoceanic routes. With that narrow of a market they sold less than a tenth of what they expected to sell.

The aircraft industry is now trying to find a way to build a supersonic aircraft that does not make a disruptive sonic boom as it flys. That could result in a new SST on the market, but it's probably years away.

Answer 2

the Labour party had been trying to ground Concorde, just as they did TSR2, from the moment they took office in the 60's, however the contract with the French made this impossible so it flew. It always looked great and the Yanks were so jealous that they tried to stop it flying to New York. The grounding after the Paris crash was just one of the icons of the late 60's to be destroyed, Hovercraft left the Channel in 2000 and of course the QE2 is to be removed from service by Carnival and replaced with the two ugly sisters next year. So all the great technical innovations of the great age of engineering have now gone and all we have left is jelly mould cars, cigar tube planes and the blocks of flats that go to sea as passenger vessels. Sad isn't it no room for beauty any more.

Answer 3

Several factors have been cited for the grounding of this unique aircraft. All are relevant to the issue in terms of economics, safety fears, old age etc.

One fact stands out, and which has never been discussed in public, is the fact that grounding became permanent once the French refused to provide the engineering and mechanical back up for the Concorde after the Paris crash. They were, perhaps, apprehensive that any mishaps in future will reflect back on the consortium itself. The aircraft was killed once the system broke down.

The aircraft itself has still a lot to offer and I personally feel that it is unfair to deprive the world of such a wonderful aircraft. In France some units remain flyable. If you could drop a line to Airbus requesting them to grant you your wish of flying in a Concorde, you never know they may oblige by taking you along when the aicraft takes to the air once again.

Answer 4

The airline was grounded because Airbus (EADS) withdrew maintenance and support for it effectively resulting in its certification having to be withdrawn. This included, amongst other things not making spare parts anymore etc.

This meant that Air France and British Airways really had no choice but to withdraw it from service. They were involved in the discussions though in the end Airbus forced the end.

It wasn't as a direct result of the accident. It was cited as being a commercial and economic decision. Richard Branson offered to pay any sum to Airbus to keep them in the air but they refused.

Just to correct a few mis-conceptions about Concorde. It was actually incredibly profitable for both of the airlines over the last 10 to 15 years of its service life. This was for a number of reasons:
1) the cost of the airframes was written off by both AF and BA some time ago - in effect they never paid for the aircraft or assigned any value on the balance sheet for them. Therefore on paper at least, they made a mint from the service.
2) contrary to people's statement on this board, the yield per seat kilometer (profit per seat per km flown) was massive on concorde. partly because of the accounting above. Partly because it was also the most expensive per km - the cheapest restricted ticket was £5k.
3) at thos rates, BA flew 2 flights per day to/from NYC 7 days a week with further services like the winter Barbados flights. AF used to run charter services like "round the world" trips - it was one of these special flights that crashed in Paris. This way the aircraft were always generating money.

Granted it was not as commercially successful over it's whole service life as aircraft such as the 737 or A320 family. The fact remains that AF and BA would not have spent millions on retrofitting them after the crash to get them in the air again for just sentimental reasons - there was a commercial reason too. Also Concorde is the safest commercial aircraft having only had 1 accident.

Answer 5

the real root cause is cost, it was simply too expensive to keep these planes up, both Air France and British Airways have actually never made any profit on the Concorde, on the contrary they've always lost tons of money because its operational costs far outweighed the revenue generated, even with the expensive tickets. The two airlines were basically flying the bird for pride because it was so unique and it represented something so luxurious and famous. After the Concorde crash, extremely expensive modifications were made to them to let them fly again, but after 9/11 the airline industry hit rock bottom and it simply didnt make sense for either airline to fly the aircraft anymore

Answer 6

Lots of billionaires and companies offered to keep them flying but BA refused to let them.
The trouble with Concorde was that it was operated at a loss for years just for the prestige of operating the worlds only supersonic airliner. When the expensive mods required after the crash had to be paid for BA said enough was enough and grounded it.
It would be so easy to get it flying again but BA point blankly refused. Personally I think one should be made to be given to the BBMF and operated by the RAF.
The government wants to wipe out a whole village to build a new runway at Heathrow but it wont protect the greatest thing that ever flew.
I saw it flying with the Reds and it is quite honestly a national treasure.
It doesnt belong on the ground.

Answer 7

My answer isn't actually relative to the question - BUT -

When the first protesters made their noise about the 'noise of Concord,' out in the west-country they set up some test engineers with recording equipment to see what level noise she actually produced ~ partly because there was a fear that it would damage the stain-glass windows of an ancient church out there.

After the recordings were done, they took another recording for comparison, and with expediency of the day, they chose the church's own bells. The result was that the noise of the bells were more liable to actually to cause damage to the church windows than an overflying Concord was.

Sash.

Answer 8

I always wanted to fly on it too. It was never very profitable for the two airlines that flew them and because there were so few of them flying (16) the company that was manufacturing spare parts was loosing money on the venture. After the crash in Paris the few flying examples that were put back into service went through an expensive upgrade of tires and fuel tank linings. All went well at first and then 9/11 happened. Suddenly there were fewer people flying on it and the type was facing another expensive upgrade of the avionics and other areas because of their age. It was decided to take it out of service.
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While it was in service it was very expensive to fly on the Concorde. At a time when you could buy a round trip ticket from NY to Paris for $1000.00 that same ticket on the Concorde cost $12,000.00. Very few people could afford these ticket prices and it became a plane for the rich and famous to ride in. The cost of it's development had been paid for by the taxpayers of England and France few of which could ever hope to be able to afford to ride on it. Unfortunately the Concorde will never fly again.
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EDIT: From Wikipedia: The small hope remaining for Concorde today rests with a dedicated group of French volunteer engineers keeping one of the youngest Concordes (F-BTSD) in near-airworthy condition. These engineers, working on the Air France aircraft retired to the Le Bourget Air and Space Museum in Paris, hope that one day Concorde will be able to show her majesty again by taking to the skies. All former British Airways Concordes, however, based in Britain, New York, Seattle and Barbados, have had their fluids drained and their systems have been disconnected, making it even harder for any of them to regain airworthiness certification..
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Answer 9

Hi,
Sadly not, as Concorde is no longer licenced to fly.
It is a marvelous thing, and I was lucky enough to do the Bahrain to Heathrow route a few years ago.
I personally have no problems, but as it was all built in the 70's, and following a crash, which was not the planes' fault, it is sadly grounded.
However, if you go to Duxford museum in Cambridgeshire, there is number 3 Which you can board, and have a peep inside the flight deck.
A sadness that it is not still airborne

Bob

Answer 10

Basically Concorde was self grounding. Bits used to fall off it regularly. With only I think 13 planes in the fleets the spares and maintenance were a problem, and the environmental campaigners always hated it. It was a matter of pride to get it in the air again after Paris, but effectively that doomed it. Nobody needs to commute to USA any more, and the cost of refurbishment just wasn't economic. Remember it was a 1960s design with concepts from the 50s, and was coming up to 30 years old. What a shame though!