Should Concorde have ever been scrapped?

Well it had first entered service back in 1969, back then it was light years ahead of its time. But it never evolved through time, it had became a dinosaur. The interior was small and cramped, and outdated and could only fit 100pax in a basic economy style interior, for the price of first class.

It never really recovered either from its crash in 2000, and 9/11 didn't help either. The whole development of the Concorde resulted in a major economic lose for both the British and the French governments. Not to mention the fact that it could only fly over the Atlantic Ocean because of the sonic booms effected its marketabilty.

"On 10 April 2003, British Airways and Air France simultaneously announced that they would retire Concorde later that year. They cited low passenger numbers following the 25 July 2000 crash, the slump in air travel following 9/11 and rising maintenance costs."

They also realized from there passengers would rather enjoy the first class appointments of sub-sonic passenger jets and that it would create much more revenue.

There are also many other reasons why its not flown including many political and enviromental reasons. The simple reason of it being "cool" just isn't enough for it to still be in use today.

I really hope that sometime in the future economic conditions change, so that some kind of Supersonic Jet could fly. At least Concorde will be remembered as a true legend of the skys.

If it doesn't make money, there is no point in flying it.

it's a shame nothing has been developed to take over - that is why it is a loss, we have taken a big step backwards in one respect.

however we can communicate cross-atlantic via internet links - there's no reason for business men to commute with it for great sums of money.

it would just be used for joyriding - and its not reall a very fun interior to be sat in.

Must have been a real honour for a pilot to fly concorde

As already pointed out, the Concorde had become a dinosaur and a financial burden. The scrapping of it doesn't necessarily mean that we're going back in time.
Engineers and designers and a whole army of others who are involved in the creation of aircraft have learned a lot from the Concorde and the concepts that had been applied to that marvel of aviation technology. I'm convinced that when the Concorde was retired, the manuals, blueprints etc. weren't destroyed.
Let's look to the future... what's happening with Richard Branson's projects?

What I could never understand is why Richard Branson wasn't allowed to take on Concorde operations and keep it flying. Even though it was a financial blackhole Branson would have known what he was taking on and given it his best shot. Thats what he does so why was he blocked by BA?

He might have introduced budget supersonic flights and made Concorde successful again.

Its sad Concorde is no longer in service and the chances of another domestic supersonic aircraft in mine or my childrens lifetime is slim to none I believe.

Richard Branson did offer to purchase British Airways fleet of Concorde's for the "original price of £1" to use for his Virgin Atlantic Airways. Branson claimed that was the price that British Airways paid for the Concorde's from the British Goverment. But thats another story, and BA rejected that offer.

Branson later said that he had offered over £5 million and said he would operate the fleet for years to come. But it never went through, not to mention that Airbus was unwilling to further service the aging airframes.

Tailhook wrote:

Let's look to the future... what's happening with Richard Branson's projects?

spaceship one - very cool idea, making space transport from old learjets - cheaper than that NASA lark...though it doesn't go fast enough to actually escape our gravity and go into actual 'space' like that bricky shuttle does.