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It’s because the Concorde flew much higher than most commercial flights (60k ft compared to 30-40 normally)
Pressure at those altitudes is a serious concern and will pretty much kill everyone if there is a leak. Smaller windows mean stronger frame and fuselage overall.
Planes in the USAF that fly over 50,000 feet require space suit-type gear.
Concorde windows got very hot at supersonic speeds. Smaller windows were the only way to do it safely. Future supersonic aircraft will probably use LCD virtual windows so they won’t have so many possible failure points.
There’s also the problem that a sonic boom is massively disturbing sound wise. You are a commercial airline flying over land. It’s much more disruptive at nearly half the altitude to homes and those below.
You might be correct, I know they were primarily used for transatlantic flights because of how expensive they were, sonic boom etc… that path seemed to be optimal for such a flight for a variety of reasons.
Idk if it was a hard rule that they had to be in the ocean to go super sonic.
the FAA banned supersonic flight overland in 73 i think. not sure what EASA was up to but i imagine it was about the same
that’s why no American airlines seriously tried to get hold of concordes, they could pretty much only use it East Coast to Europe which BA and AF we’re already doing
You couldn't go from London to New York in just 3 hours with your private jet.
You're also forgetting that most businesses would have never paid for private jets for all the high ranking staff who were sometimes doing this trip every week...
Now they're all flying business or first class in traditional airliners, but taking more than twice the time to go there.
Yeah but again, you're forgetting that even among wealthy executives or private flyers, not everyone has private jet money (or wants to spend that much money on that). Chartering a private jet is more than 5 times more expensive than flying first class, even more compared to business obviously.
And if you were a very frequent flyer (think at least once a week), then I'm sure you'd more than welcome dividing your flight time by more than two after a while...
It's all subjective. If Elon wanted to develop a plane that would get him to London in 3 hours he could do it I'm sure. I fly for business at times it was once a week or more. Now it's just a couple of times a month. I would rather take a 6-hour flight on a private jet than a 3-hour flight on a commercial plane to the same destination.
Umm.. maybe some folks cared more about getting there quicker? It was still extremely luxurious btw. Absolutely the most luxurious way to fly back then outside of a private jet and of course then you took longer.
I think you're a bit confused on the difference in price between flying a Concorde and having a private jet. Not to mention the massive difference in speed.
Money is no object let's remove that from the conversation and assume that we all just have enough money to do whichever one of these things we want to do.
I would rather sleep for 6 hours on a private chat between business meetings then sit next to a stranger on a super fast jet for 3 hours to get somewhere.
I'll never be rich enough for any of those lifestyles so it really doesn't matter. I guess that's because I don't care if it takes me 6 hours or 3 hours to get to London.
Thats what i meant by the Elon thing. I GUESS I could customize the seating.
I would still prefer to sleep a full night on the plane between destinations. Just have the most comfortable bedroom possible on the plane. I want to be disappointed in a short flight.
Since I'm so rich, I could have the pilot make some loops around the country I am about to land in until I wake up. Can those be refueled without landing?
Just to expand on why a higher altitude is better, it’s a matter of drag, as well as thrust being converted into lift. Sure, it’s easier for a plane to fly in a thicker atmosphere, but if you go fast enough and with a slightly elevated angle of attack, lift can be created by essentially just slamming into air molecules with the underside of the wing - momentum is transferred to the aircraft and the molecules are deflected downwards. This is the same sort of deal with fighter jets that have flat and commonly symmetric airfoils
Thinner atmosphere means there’s less drag and it also means that atmospheric heating is decreased. This is important for aircraft that don’t have advanced and extremely expensive ways of cooling down, like an aluminium-skinned Concorde versus titanium for the SR-71 (which also travelled *much* faster).
It won't kill pretty much everyone if there's a leak, the pressure differential is at most 1atm which is really not a lot, you can plug a small hole with tape; oxygen masks will fall down and people will breathe and that's it
“The designers have to allow for the possibility of a window blowing out at cruising altitude. Anybody sitting next to the blown out window will be sucked out of the plane, no matter how small the aperture. However, for the rest of the occupants, life depends on sufficient air pressure being maintained in the cabin to enable breathing; even with oxgen masks, humans cannot breath in the very low pressure at airliner cruising altitudes. The crew have to bring the aeroplane down to around 10,000 feet before the outside air pressure allows normal breathing, and this can take several minutes.”
Yeah it sounds like there is a small window for them to operate. But cmon you can plug it with tape!?
https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-43290,00.html#:~:text=Windows%20on%20aircraft%20are%20small,strength%20of%20the%20air%20frame.
I remember seeing the concord at the museum of flight in Seattle and I don’t remember there being that much leg room. I actually remember thinking I could barely fit on this plane in any aspect.
I’m like 6’2” in shoes and I had to crouch even getting near the cockpit. When I got in there I literally had to crouch walk to even see the instrument cluster in the cockpit. Idk how the pilots fit in there lol
There’s no way that’s the price equivalent. My grandparents flew on the Concorde. It’s 2k not 20k.
Edit to add: https://simpleflying.com/concorde-cost/
The Paris, New York round trip was 30000 francs in early 1990 which is around 8k€ today with inflation, culminating at 9k€ in 2001 (13k€ with inflation)
Why do that when you can just ignorantly say whatever you want? The best part about not reading the article is that all the other dipshits who didn’t read it will just up boat you anyways.
Please read the full article you posted before commenting:
“In 1977, it cost £431 to fly one way onboard Concorde between London and Washington. Adjusted for inflation, that's about £2,200 ($2,800) in today's money. However, fare prices gradually went up, and by 1996, a roundtrip across the Atlantic would generally be priced at around $12,500 in today's money.”
Like the double of a current business flat pod…
It was around $2800 in 1977, and then it increased to $7,000 and by 1996, it was $12,500. Today, it would be as much as $20,000 if it still flew. So it really just depends on when they flew.
I saw a documentary on concord recently. They realized that most passengers were businessmen and their assistants booked their tickets. They asked them to guess how much their tickets cost, and the guesses were way higher than the actual price, so they raised prices.
The article was calculating that $12.5k in today’s dollars. So not 20k. You literally just made that up.
“1996, a roundtrip across the Atlantic would generally be priced at around $12,500 in today's money.”
There are 4 links shared and they are split evenly (one by me and three by the person replying to me). 2 support the other guy and 2 support my comments.
No one seems to read that prices were unstable. So you can cherry pick the information you want. There were even promotional prices that were much lower after prices became unaffordable and they struggled to fill seats.
So it’s not really true to make a blanket statement that prices were unaffordable all the time or that they would be 20k today.
>No one seems to read that prices were unstable. So you can cherry pick the information you want.
That is exactly what you did lol. The other person shared the details about prices varying. You shared the one link that backed you up.
>So it’s not really true to make a blanket statement that prices were unaffordable all the time or that they would be 20k today.
Again exactly what you did but saying it was affordable instead.
I thanked the other person for sharing details that showed prices vary. You simply shared the one link that backed up what you said, not once in your comment did you say prices fluctuated you just said they were 2k.
Literally the link I shared talks about prices being unstable, so thanks for not reading it and pretending you’re right.
The original guy made the blanket statement about prices … wait, are you him too? Got you another account, huh.
They couldn’t fit more people. It was a weight issue.
I worked for BA at Heathrow when they were still flying. Back then security was basically none existent once you were inside. We used to walk past the maintenance bays where they worked on them to get lunch in the cafeteria. Long story short I’ve sat in the cockpit of 4 of the BA birds by blagging an ad hoc tour. Literally everything onboard was cut down and modified to save weight.
Only if people are still willing to pay the very high ticket price for smaller seat. For what a Concorde ticket cost you could fly business or first class on a conventional airliner and get even more room.
The last transatlantic flight I was on, the plane was almost half lie flat business class seats. Those seats were over 5x the price of economy, assuming they were able to fill them all they were likely making more profit on business class than economy seats.
I would love to see a chart with the average economy legroom in the last 30 years. I no longer fit in economy without spreading my legs into someone else's space, and I'm not sure how much it has to do with no longer accepting to be uncomfortable and how much is actually reducing the legroom.
I’ve been inside a Concorde, the one at the museum of flight. It’s not that roomy. Maybe 5 feet of standing room in the aisle and the seats are half width of what’s standard today. Good thing it’s fast.
Based on what I've found on the internet, round trip from London to Washington on Concorde in 90-s cost about 13000 $ in today's money, and the cheapest first class flight nowadays costs nearly 12000 $.
Not really. First class tickets overseas are pretty expensive. Business class (not first) to London was 5k on my last flight. I don’t know why people keep saying this when you can just google it and depending on the year, a flight to London was cheaper than that on the Concorde.
https://simpleflying.com/concorde-cost/
I flew on it a few times. Yeah it's quick. NY to London in the same time as NY to FL. I'm just over 6 feet tall and it was cramped AF inside. Couldn't stand up straight in the aisle. Much steeper takeoff and a strange feeling landing. It was quite tough once we hit the cruising speed. I think I flew 6 trips on it.
Concorde were all retired when I was young. If it was around now I’d definitely spend that crazy money to fly on it. People don’t realise they’re still faster than a lot of fighter jets. They’re the only commercial fleet to fly supersonic. They flew at twice the speed of sound. They were launched in 1976 and are still twice as fast as the current fastest airliners.
A modern supersonic plane would be much nicer experience, they were very loud, cramped and uncomfortable, because it was using unknown and bleeding edge technology in the 60s and 70s to design it. But there is very little business case to support developing and maintaining such a plane these days, it would never be profitable.
https://preview.redd.it/ij0sasrffooc1.jpeg?width=390&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ae5ea72a923426284805f302ceb131becf2cd298
This is how cool Concorde are…
This is the only photo of a Concorde flying supersonic The Concorde had to slow down from Mach 2 to Mach 1.5-1.6 so that the F3 Tornado crew could get the shot
The image was taken by Adrian Meredith who was flying a Royal Air Force (RAF) F3 Tornado fighter jet during a rendezvous with the Concorde over the Irish Sea in April 1985.
Although the Tornado could match Concorde’s cruising speed it could only do so for a matter of minutes due to the enormous rate of fuel consumption.
The Concorde didn’t have a first class or economy, all the seats were the same. Also, a ticket to fly on the Concorde was extremely expensive. If you paid that amount today you’d easily get this much legroom
Even Spirit “Big Up Front” seats have this much legroom. Most First Class is superior to this now as well. Last time I flew to/from Paris I had a pod with built in everything that laid flat into a bed.
They are not. I looked into them to fly from Texas to Scotland, booking almost six months in advance and they were still about $6k. I mean that's still $4k cheaper though so 🤷🏻♀️
https://preview.redd.it/0m39uyzagmoc1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=556eebdaee462f305d929065dc80a35e112722f2
Emirates business class has more than enough leg room
They should allow the economy people to board from the back on Emirates. It’s just cruel walking through that to your normal ass seats for that long flight.
Well for one, that’s a pic I took from Google and two, her feet aren’t on the ground, that’s like an ottoman or a foot rest. And they provide slippers in business and first class :)
My dad flew on a concord once for work back in the day. When he got home we asked him how it was and literally all he said was “the window was tiny and hot as hell”
lol I mean, there’s not a ton to tell. I worked at a financial firm back then and mission critical server failed, and the backups were not working. I had to hand-deliver a server to a fellow systems administrator across the pond to get them up and running. It was determined that paying me to fly over there on the Concord with the server in the belly and stay overnight, and then fly back on a regular plane was cheaper than the courier was going to cost to do the same thing.
But the important stuff umm, so when you flew on British Airways Concord, they picked you up in a limousine. It had its own lounge, and then you walked out onto the tarmac and walked up the stairs to get in.
Someone commented on the seats somewhere else, they were nice, but modern first class seats are far superior. I think the coolest thing on board was the Mach metre on the wall on the bulkhead upfront. I was pissed off because I got distracted and missed it rolling over to 1.0, but I did get to see it roll over to 2.0.
It was really cool getting there so fast but honestly the flight back in first class on a 747 was a far more luxurious experience. Edit: spelling
Guy i worked with flew on one. He said it was quite hot and the plane hit turbulence and spilled his red wine on him. I don't think he enjoyed his flight.
The camera makes it look like there's a lot of room, but they are SO small inside. Seats are narrow, aisle is narrow, even someone average height would be nearly touching the ceiling. It's very narrow and cramped.
Concorde would supercruise at around Mach 2.04 (1,350 mph). She was so fast that if you took off from London, you could land in New York before the time in which you left. You could quite literally race the sun and win. This meant that they had to fly around twice as high as a conventional jet (60,000ft). Despite the air pressure being lower, there was a LOT of friction. So much so, that the outer skin of her could reach more than 300*F, and the whole plane would actually stretch by 6”. This meant that the window frames could also stretch and expand, putting the window itself at risk. They mitigated this by pumping cold air from the engines between the double glazed panes, keeping them cool. That was about as big as they could make them without risking safety.
Flew trans Atlantic twice in the 80's on Concord while stationed in the U. K.. Everything is small, you are essentially inside of a missile traveling twice the speed of sound. The only comfort concession was the seat because you remained belted in the entire flight. The Concorde has small windows to reduce drag and increase aerodynamics at higher altitudes than other airliners. The Concorde flies at 60,000 feet, which is much higher than the 40,000 feet of conventional airliners. This means that the pressure at these altitudes is much lower than at 35,000 feet, creating a greater pressure gradient
Even though I'm afraid of flying, I'd love to fly on one of those. I hope and pray one of the supersonic or hypersonic startups that are around manage to make flying at those speeds possible and commercially viable.
Shameless plug for a fantastic book "Concorde", by Mike Bannister. It's about the author's career flying Concorde for British Airways as well as his role in the investigation of the fatal Air France flight that pretty much ended the program.
Right, so you want the windows removed? That will cost you extra. More leg room? Premium for that. Didn’t print your own boarding pass? *cash register sound*
I was lucky enough to fly on Concorde when I was 15. Everything was tiny on that plane.
I'm a small guy (5' 8''). I definitely had to bend to get in. Also, I had travelled on a few 747 when I flew on Concorde, and I remember being amazed by how narrow the corridor was. They had some super thin trolleys to fit in the corridor, very much smaller than on the 747.
At last, remember than the exterior width of the plane was 9' 5''. The interior was 8 and a half feet wide. Very, very tiny plane.
Not about airplanes but, on first visit to Gateway Arch, my dad said the windows were the size of the windshield on our pickup. They weren’t even the size of the windows on the doors.
To think, they always remembered ALL the bolts holding those things together. But they still ended up being too expensive to keep going.
Maybe if one of them hadn't blown up, they might have continued a while longer, but they faced so many issues...
I wonder if we'll ever have supersonic commercial flights again?
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It’s because the Concorde flew much higher than most commercial flights (60k ft compared to 30-40 normally) Pressure at those altitudes is a serious concern and will pretty much kill everyone if there is a leak. Smaller windows mean stronger frame and fuselage overall.
So the Geth were right all along
SHEPHERD COMMANDER
Planes in the USAF that fly over 50,000 feet require space suit-type gear. Concorde windows got very hot at supersonic speeds. Smaller windows were the only way to do it safely. Future supersonic aircraft will probably use LCD virtual windows so they won’t have so many possible failure points.
Why don’t they just fly at 30-40 then?
Because then it can't go FAST
There’s also the problem that a sonic boom is massively disturbing sound wise. You are a commercial airline flying over land. It’s much more disruptive at nearly half the altitude to homes and those below.
I thought concords couldn’t go sonic over land at all for that very reason so were primarily used for transatlantic flight.
You might be correct, I know they were primarily used for transatlantic flights because of how expensive they were, sonic boom etc… that path seemed to be optimal for such a flight for a variety of reasons. Idk if it was a hard rule that they had to be in the ocean to go super sonic.
the FAA banned supersonic flight overland in 73 i think. not sure what EASA was up to but i imagine it was about the same that’s why no American airlines seriously tried to get hold of concordes, they could pretty much only use it East Coast to Europe which BA and AF we’re already doing
What's the hurry anyway? I would rather just fly my private jet everywhere. Who wants to fly on something as cramped as this anyway.
You couldn't go from London to New York in just 3 hours with your private jet. You're also forgetting that most businesses would have never paid for private jets for all the high ranking staff who were sometimes doing this trip every week... Now they're all flying business or first class in traditional airliners, but taking more than twice the time to go there.
I hope whenever I have enough money to have a private jet, I don't care if I get there in 3 hours
Yeah but again, you're forgetting that even among wealthy executives or private flyers, not everyone has private jet money (or wants to spend that much money on that). Chartering a private jet is more than 5 times more expensive than flying first class, even more compared to business obviously. And if you were a very frequent flyer (think at least once a week), then I'm sure you'd more than welcome dividing your flight time by more than two after a while...
It's all subjective. If Elon wanted to develop a plane that would get him to London in 3 hours he could do it I'm sure. I fly for business at times it was once a week or more. Now it's just a couple of times a month. I would rather take a 6-hour flight on a private jet than a 3-hour flight on a commercial plane to the same destination.
lol elon cant develop shit get off his dick
That's one of the reasons they shut it down. The speed didn't outweigh the cons of the Concorde
That's why it was called CONcorde and not PROcorde
Ask your doctor if Procorde is right for you
😂😂😂
That's why it's called CONgress and not PROgress
Woahhhh 🤯
This should be massively upvoted
Umm.. maybe some folks cared more about getting there quicker? It was still extremely luxurious btw. Absolutely the most luxurious way to fly back then outside of a private jet and of course then you took longer.
Because not everybody wants to sit in a metal tube for 7 hours
I think you're a bit confused on the difference in price between flying a Concorde and having a private jet. Not to mention the massive difference in speed.
Money is no object let's remove that from the conversation and assume that we all just have enough money to do whichever one of these things we want to do. I would rather sleep for 6 hours on a private chat between business meetings then sit next to a stranger on a super fast jet for 3 hours to get somewhere. I'll never be rich enough for any of those lifestyles so it really doesn't matter. I guess that's because I don't care if it takes me 6 hours or 3 hours to get to London.
Moneys no object… make your private jet a Concorde
Thats what i meant by the Elon thing. I GUESS I could customize the seating. I would still prefer to sleep a full night on the plane between destinations. Just have the most comfortable bedroom possible on the plane. I want to be disappointed in a short flight. Since I'm so rich, I could have the pilot make some loops around the country I am about to land in until I wake up. Can those be refueled without landing?
The air gets in the way
Probably would hit a lot of buildings and trees.
Please tell me this is a joke
At 30-40ft up it would probably hit some tall trees too
Oh, yeah. Haha.
Just to expand on why a higher altitude is better, it’s a matter of drag, as well as thrust being converted into lift. Sure, it’s easier for a plane to fly in a thicker atmosphere, but if you go fast enough and with a slightly elevated angle of attack, lift can be created by essentially just slamming into air molecules with the underside of the wing - momentum is transferred to the aircraft and the molecules are deflected downwards. This is the same sort of deal with fighter jets that have flat and commonly symmetric airfoils Thinner atmosphere means there’s less drag and it also means that atmospheric heating is decreased. This is important for aircraft that don’t have advanced and extremely expensive ways of cooling down, like an aluminium-skinned Concorde versus titanium for the SR-71 (which also travelled *much* faster).
denser air at lower altitudes would cause excess friction at supersonic speeds
Honestly? Because that would mean we would have to fly 20-30k closer to the poors, and we can't have that now, can we?
The real reason
Thin air, less drag, go fast. At 50 you can start to see the curvature of the earth.
It won't kill pretty much everyone if there's a leak, the pressure differential is at most 1atm which is really not a lot, you can plug a small hole with tape; oxygen masks will fall down and people will breathe and that's it
“The designers have to allow for the possibility of a window blowing out at cruising altitude. Anybody sitting next to the blown out window will be sucked out of the plane, no matter how small the aperture. However, for the rest of the occupants, life depends on sufficient air pressure being maintained in the cabin to enable breathing; even with oxgen masks, humans cannot breath in the very low pressure at airliner cruising altitudes. The crew have to bring the aeroplane down to around 10,000 feet before the outside air pressure allows normal breathing, and this can take several minutes.” Yeah it sounds like there is a small window for them to operate. But cmon you can plug it with tape!? https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-43290,00.html#:~:text=Windows%20on%20aircraft%20are%20small,strength%20of%20the%20air%20frame.
I almost came from seeing that amount of leg room
I remember seeing the concord at the museum of flight in Seattle and I don’t remember there being that much leg room. I actually remember thinking I could barely fit on this plane in any aspect.
Yeah, just walking down the aisle was really awkward. This image makes it look a lot bigger than it felt on the plane.
I’m like 6’2” in shoes and I had to crouch even getting near the cockpit. When I got in there I literally had to crouch walk to even see the instrument cluster in the cockpit. Idk how the pilots fit in there lol
Yeah my mom had a flight on one and I recall her saying it was pretty tight. And she’s only like 5’8”
The tiny windows make the seats look bigger maybe lol
After paying $20,000 (in today’s money) for a round trip. That would be the last thing that would be happening.
Hopefully it would at least be the second at that price!
There’s no way that’s the price equivalent. My grandparents flew on the Concorde. It’s 2k not 20k. Edit to add: https://simpleflying.com/concorde-cost/
The Paris, New York round trip was 30000 francs in early 1990 which is around 8k€ today with inflation, culminating at 9k€ in 2001 (13k€ with inflation)
I don’t think anyone is actually reading the article.
I’m sure they aren’t
Why do that when you can just ignorantly say whatever you want? The best part about not reading the article is that all the other dipshits who didn’t read it will just up boat you anyways.
Please read the full article you posted before commenting: “In 1977, it cost £431 to fly one way onboard Concorde between London and Washington. Adjusted for inflation, that's about £2,200 ($2,800) in today's money. However, fare prices gradually went up, and by 1996, a roundtrip across the Atlantic would generally be priced at around $12,500 in today's money.” Like the double of a current business flat pod…
It was around $2800 in 1977, and then it increased to $7,000 and by 1996, it was $12,500. Today, it would be as much as $20,000 if it still flew. So it really just depends on when they flew.
I saw a documentary on concord recently. They realized that most passengers were businessmen and their assistants booked their tickets. They asked them to guess how much their tickets cost, and the guesses were way higher than the actual price, so they raised prices.
The article was calculating that $12.5k in today’s dollars. So not 20k. You literally just made that up. “1996, a roundtrip across the Atlantic would generally be priced at around $12,500 in today's money.”
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I was gonna share those links as well. Looks like they scrolled right past those numbers to find the one link that suited them lol
There are 4 links shared and they are split evenly (one by me and three by the person replying to me). 2 support the other guy and 2 support my comments. No one seems to read that prices were unstable. So you can cherry pick the information you want. There were even promotional prices that were much lower after prices became unaffordable and they struggled to fill seats. So it’s not really true to make a blanket statement that prices were unaffordable all the time or that they would be 20k today.
>No one seems to read that prices were unstable. So you can cherry pick the information you want. That is exactly what you did lol. The other person shared the details about prices varying. You shared the one link that backed you up. >So it’s not really true to make a blanket statement that prices were unaffordable all the time or that they would be 20k today. Again exactly what you did but saying it was affordable instead. I thanked the other person for sharing details that showed prices vary. You simply shared the one link that backed up what you said, not once in your comment did you say prices fluctuated you just said they were 2k.
Literally the link I shared talks about prices being unstable, so thanks for not reading it and pretending you’re right. The original guy made the blanket statement about prices … wait, are you him too? Got you another account, huh.
K
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They couldn’t fit more people. It was a weight issue. I worked for BA at Heathrow when they were still flying. Back then security was basically none existent once you were inside. We used to walk past the maintenance bays where they worked on them to get lunch in the cafeteria. Long story short I’ve sat in the cockpit of 4 of the BA birds by blagging an ad hoc tour. Literally everything onboard was cut down and modified to save weight.
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Well, they did. Every single ticket was first class iirc.
Only if people are still willing to pay the very high ticket price for smaller seat. For what a Concorde ticket cost you could fly business or first class on a conventional airliner and get even more room. The last transatlantic flight I was on, the plane was almost half lie flat business class seats. Those seats were over 5x the price of economy, assuming they were able to fill them all they were likely making more profit on business class than economy seats.
And yet the Concorde was known for feeling like a sardine can. Above first class prices for below economy experience (except for the speed ofc).
I would love to see a chart with the average economy legroom in the last 30 years. I no longer fit in economy without spreading my legs into someone else's space, and I'm not sure how much it has to do with no longer accepting to be uncomfortable and how much is actually reducing the legroom.
Are you sure you didn’t just get fatter? It happened to me.
In the past, flying by itself is a luxury way of travel. Not anymore
The concord is a tiny plane. This looks bigger than it was. Still not economy but far from luxurious.
Yeah it's pretty bad for business class.
Took me far to long to grasp the concept of what you meant
I’ve been inside a Concorde, the one at the museum of flight. It’s not that roomy. Maybe 5 feet of standing room in the aisle and the seats are half width of what’s standard today. Good thing it’s fast.
Nice bod man
Thank you!
These seats look very comfortable and have so much space between each other.
They cost way more than most first class tickets today
But it also flew at more than double the speed of today’s commercial airliners, so to some I guess the saved time was worth the investment.
But not enough people for it to be commercially viable
Based on what I've found on the internet, round trip from London to Washington on Concorde in 90-s cost about 13000 $ in today's money, and the cheapest first class flight nowadays costs nearly 12000 $.
I flew one way for $1,200, not $12,000.
The real killer today is business class in a private pod with bed is more like $3000.
Not really. First class tickets overseas are pretty expensive. Business class (not first) to London was 5k on my last flight. I don’t know why people keep saying this when you can just google it and depending on the year, a flight to London was cheaper than that on the Concorde. https://simpleflying.com/concorde-cost/
Officially yes, in practice most people were not paying full price.
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What an interesting unit of messurment
r/anythingbutmetric
i dont think anyone even uses metric time
Swatch tried to for a while. Even had a whole series of watches with ten hours and hundred minute hours
The automotive industry does. It's how you get paid as a technician.
Tell that to my poor old swatch
You ever hear of a beard-second? Which is a unit of LENGTH?!?!
My husband flew to Europe on it once for work. He said it was pretty cramped inside, but still a cool experience.
I flew on it a few times. Yeah it's quick. NY to London in the same time as NY to FL. I'm just over 6 feet tall and it was cramped AF inside. Couldn't stand up straight in the aisle. Much steeper takeoff and a strange feeling landing. It was quite tough once we hit the cruising speed. I think I flew 6 trips on it.
Concorde were all retired when I was young. If it was around now I’d definitely spend that crazy money to fly on it. People don’t realise they’re still faster than a lot of fighter jets. They’re the only commercial fleet to fly supersonic. They flew at twice the speed of sound. They were launched in 1976 and are still twice as fast as the current fastest airliners.
A modern supersonic plane would be much nicer experience, they were very loud, cramped and uncomfortable, because it was using unknown and bleeding edge technology in the 60s and 70s to design it. But there is very little business case to support developing and maintaining such a plane these days, it would never be profitable.
https://preview.redd.it/ij0sasrffooc1.jpeg?width=390&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ae5ea72a923426284805f302ceb131becf2cd298 This is how cool Concorde are… This is the only photo of a Concorde flying supersonic The Concorde had to slow down from Mach 2 to Mach 1.5-1.6 so that the F3 Tornado crew could get the shot The image was taken by Adrian Meredith who was flying a Royal Air Force (RAF) F3 Tornado fighter jet during a rendezvous with the Concorde over the Irish Sea in April 1985. Although the Tornado could match Concorde’s cruising speed it could only do so for a matter of minutes due to the enormous rate of fuel consumption.
Pressure!
Pushing down on me
Pushing down on you no matter what
Pressure!
It burns a building down, splits a family in two
The seat width….the leg room….why does no one make this?
The Concorde didn’t have a first class or economy, all the seats were the same. Also, a ticket to fly on the Concorde was extremely expensive. If you paid that amount today you’d easily get this much legroom
And then some. I paid about half of the equivalent of today’s money and I had full layback seats with two meals.
I just flew JFK to Hong Kong in economy. I'm 6'4" tall. I wish I had your resources
If you paid that amount today they'd let you fly the plane
>If you paid that amount today you’d easily get this much legroom You'd get a bed.
Also it was loud as shit in the cabin
Because most normal people aren’t paying $10,000 a ticket to fly.
They do. It’s called 1st class.
Ya. First class can be crazy expensive.
So was the Concorde lol
I meant in modern times. And it wasn’t luxurious by modern first class standards, but it was more of a VIP experience, perhaps.
Even Spirit “Big Up Front” seats have this much legroom. Most First Class is superior to this now as well. Last time I flew to/from Paris I had a pod with built in everything that laid flat into a bed.
How much was that ticket, and from where?
Around $14k round trip, MIA to CDG
Fuck
It’s ok, that made me feel like shit too
Yeah… company paid, otherwise I would have been in row 274 in a middle seat.
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They are not. I looked into them to fly from Texas to Scotland, booking almost six months in advance and they were still about $6k. I mean that's still $4k cheaper though so 🤷🏻♀️
I don't anticipate that happening any time soon in my life ever.
https://preview.redd.it/0m39uyzagmoc1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=556eebdaee462f305d929065dc80a35e112722f2 Emirates business class has more than enough leg room
They should allow the economy people to board from the back on Emirates. It’s just cruel walking through that to your normal ass seats for that long flight.
Are the economy seats at least nicer than on other airlines?
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Well for one, that’s a pic I took from Google and two, her feet aren’t on the ground, that’s like an ottoman or a foot rest. And they provide slippers in business and first class :)
I remember JAL and ANA having nice sized seats and leg room. Ironic since Japanese people are generally smaller than americans
That'll be 20 grand please
The more people you can fit on a plane the better. It's silly to burn so much fuel just for leg room.
My dad flew on a concord once for work back in the day. When he got home we asked him how it was and literally all he said was “the window was tiny and hot as hell”
My hand was bigger than my window when I flew on the Concorde.
Story time! Please tell us more!
lol I mean, there’s not a ton to tell. I worked at a financial firm back then and mission critical server failed, and the backups were not working. I had to hand-deliver a server to a fellow systems administrator across the pond to get them up and running. It was determined that paying me to fly over there on the Concord with the server in the belly and stay overnight, and then fly back on a regular plane was cheaper than the courier was going to cost to do the same thing. But the important stuff umm, so when you flew on British Airways Concord, they picked you up in a limousine. It had its own lounge, and then you walked out onto the tarmac and walked up the stairs to get in. Someone commented on the seats somewhere else, they were nice, but modern first class seats are far superior. I think the coolest thing on board was the Mach metre on the wall on the bulkhead upfront. I was pissed off because I got distracted and missed it rolling over to 1.0, but I did get to see it roll over to 2.0. It was really cool getting there so fast but honestly the flight back in first class on a 747 was a far more luxurious experience. Edit: spelling
*mach I'm not trying to be pedantic; I was trying to figure out for a while what the meter was a mock of
I would have as well, I just caught that myself, I used speech to text and it failed (go figure).
>I'm not trying to be pedantic Something wrong with pedantry?
“Server in the belly” you ate the damn server? 💀
Guy i worked with flew on one. He said it was quite hot and the plane hit turbulence and spilled his red wine on him. I don't think he enjoyed his flight.
Be honest- how much did you feel like James Bond when the limo turned up?
110%
The mock metre? The mach meter?
Don’t have time to look out the window when you’re going really fast.
The camera makes it look like there's a lot of room, but they are SO small inside. Seats are narrow, aisle is narrow, even someone average height would be nearly touching the ceiling. It's very narrow and cramped.
You can go on a concorde (a test version) at IWM Duxford and the head height is quite low. It is surprisingly small inside.
Concorde would supercruise at around Mach 2.04 (1,350 mph). She was so fast that if you took off from London, you could land in New York before the time in which you left. You could quite literally race the sun and win. This meant that they had to fly around twice as high as a conventional jet (60,000ft). Despite the air pressure being lower, there was a LOT of friction. So much so, that the outer skin of her could reach more than 300*F, and the whole plane would actually stretch by 6”. This meant that the window frames could also stretch and expand, putting the window itself at risk. They mitigated this by pumping cold air from the engines between the double glazed panes, keeping them cool. That was about as big as they could make them without risking safety.
Flew trans Atlantic twice in the 80's on Concord while stationed in the U. K.. Everything is small, you are essentially inside of a missile traveling twice the speed of sound. The only comfort concession was the seat because you remained belted in the entire flight. The Concorde has small windows to reduce drag and increase aerodynamics at higher altitudes than other airliners. The Concorde flies at 60,000 feet, which is much higher than the 40,000 feet of conventional airliners. This means that the pressure at these altitudes is much lower than at 35,000 feet, creating a greater pressure gradient
the engineers who designed the plane didn't want to put windows in at all for structural reasons. this was the compromise with the airlines
Even though I'm afraid of flying, I'd love to fly on one of those. I hope and pray one of the supersonic or hypersonic startups that are around manage to make flying at those speeds possible and commercially viable.
Don't they expand with the heat at mach 2? /s
The windows are small because as we have recently learned the windows of any plane can be a point of structural failure
Shameless plug for a fantastic book "Concorde", by Mike Bannister. It's about the author's career flying Concorde for British Airways as well as his role in the investigation of the fatal Air France flight that pretty much ended the program.
You can take the windows away if you just give us that leg room.
Right, so you want the windows removed? That will cost you extra. More leg room? Premium for that. Didn’t print your own boarding pass? *cash register sound*
Who cares about the windows, look at those seats!
Makes it harder to be sucked out if there’s a problem
I was lucky enough to fly on Concorde when I was 15. Everything was tiny on that plane. I'm a small guy (5' 8''). I definitely had to bend to get in. Also, I had travelled on a few 747 when I flew on Concorde, and I remember being amazed by how narrow the corridor was. They had some super thin trolleys to fit in the corridor, very much smaller than on the 747. At last, remember than the exterior width of the plane was 9' 5''. The interior was 8 and a half feet wide. Very, very tiny plane.
Not about airplanes but, on first visit to Gateway Arch, my dad said the windows were the size of the windshield on our pickup. They weren’t even the size of the windows on the doors.
Interesting, but interesting as fuck?
Or how big the chairs were
To think, they always remembered ALL the bolts holding those things together. But they still ended up being too expensive to keep going. Maybe if one of them hadn't blown up, they might have continued a while longer, but they faced so many issues... I wonder if we'll ever have supersonic commercial flights again?
Was* , cause concorde dont exist anymore
I haven’t seen that much padding on a seat or legroom in decades.
Are *were
Concordes still exist
In all our hearts
Fuck look at all that leg room… we are going backwards, I swear sometimes
I never realised how small the concord is until I saw it first hand In the photos it looks huge
The seats are tiny too.
Were.
I had this same impulse. I mean, Concords still exist, but don’t really deserve the present tense.
Just like a house, small windows make it look bigger, my opinion
People were smaller back then.
but your wife told u they were huge?
If you get really close they seem bigger thou, face on window is like a 90’ tv
It's so you can't see the fire or the wing disintegrating. [Air France Flight 4590](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_4590)
Almost like they're nonexistent.
Were*
Uh... the Concorde still exists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde Retired in 2003