Why Did The Concorde Plane Fail?
The Concorde Plane is a supersonic passenger jet that was capable of reaching a top speed of Mach 2 (Twice the speed of sound around 2180 Km/h). This plane could cross the Atlantic just under 4 hours. Why did such a fast passenger plane got decommissioned in 2003?
A Brief history of the plane
The Concorde plane was build and designed by the British Aircraft Corporation and the Aérospatiale in an joint effort under the Anglo-French treaty. The planes first flight was on 2 March 1969 and was introduced to the public on 21 January 1976. It was the first public SST and had a unique look with it's triangular wings and "dipped down" nose. Operators like Air France and British Airways used this plane to transport passengers at a fast speeds!
But Why did this plane got decommissioned? There are several reasons to why this amazing aircraft got decommissioned. Here are some of the reasons.
It was expensive
The Concorde Plane could carry up to a 100 passengers. This paled in comparison of the Boeing Airbuses that could take up to 300 passengers! This made the price of the Concorde tickets expensive because the price could not be spread out as much as the Airbuses ticket prices. It cost around $20908 per ticket in 2002. This made the Concorde plane flight a luxury flight. The seats were also pretty crammed so the value of the ticket went in to the short time that one had flown.
This made Concorde less profitable and putt of a lot of airline operators. There where only four airline operators that used Concorde for flight. This had a share to the decommissioning of the Concorde plane.
Polution
The Concorde plane flew higher than the normal passenger planes. It flew about 18 Km high in the air. It flew so high that one could see the curvature of the Earth. This was bad for the environment because the plane could just fly in the ozone layer and could directly pollute this area causing the hole in the ozone layer to become bigger at a faster rate. The Plane had a bad wrap around environmentalists. This contributed to less support of the Concorde plane.
Noise
The Concorde plane was capable of reaching speeds twice the speed of sound (As mentioned above). It's engine made a lot of load noise when lifting off. But that was still manageable. The real problem came in when the plane reached mach 1 or 2. A sonic boom happens when a plane breaks the sound barrier. A loud sound wave spreads across the area and could potentially shatter the windows of buildings and cars. This is why the concord could only fly over the ocean at top speed. There was state laws in the US against Super Sonic flight over cities and towns at the time of the Concorde's public debut. This made flights with the Concord over the main land of the US impossible, this in turn made US Airline operator not using the Concorde.
On 25 July 2000 the Air France Flight 4590 crashed. This flight was in a Concorde plane. There was no survivors. This scared off a lot of intentional passengers, things only got worse after 9/11. In 2003 The plane was decommissioned. It was little profitable and little people used it when it came out. It was also used old technology and the BAC and Aérospatiale did not find it worth the money to update the technology for a new plane. All of this factors lead to the downfall of the Concorde plane.
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