Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/12/30
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 06:12 AM 12/30/03 +0000, Frank Dernie wrote: >It is possibly the development costs which they were talking about, but >I don't think it ever made a profit - maybe the information you read is >true and that which I read is not but I think not. If they were making >a handsome profit why did they stop? >All the information I heard was that Air France never made any money >flying it and BA only on the New York route. Well, check your back-files of THE ECONOMIST for discussion, as they have covered CONCORDE in great detail since 1967 when it was first a reality. The UK and France wrote off development costs around 1980 which allowed BA to claim a profit (never a "handsome" profit, mind you!) for its operational life. I have no information, and no interest, in Air France, so I cannot comment on their (probably hamfisted) operation of the SST. The CONCORDE was grounded due to its age and for no other reason. The opposition of the US to the CONCORDE was only sour grapes, as our Congress refused to fund the Boeing SST. When this occured, the US government immediately went into hull defilade and has never given the CONCORDE an opportunity to succeed, even going so far as to pressure foreign governments in South-West Asia and Canada to deny the CONCORDE overflight rights to ensure that no Europe-to-Asia routes were possible -- and that is where the profits really could be found! Now, the US is proposing a hupersonic transport (HST), a suborbital craft which could do Vancouver-to-Sydney in under three hours and the Atlantic in less than an hour. The Europeans are also working on such an HST. If the US welches out and the Europeans build it, once again, the US will attempt to kill it, an awful thing for my government to do. If the HST works, though, us smokers might be more inclined to fly overseas, albeit Heathrow and Dulles D Terminal are the only "smokers-be-damned" airports I have ever been forced to pass through. Marc Marc msmall@infionline.net FAX: +540/343-7315 Cha robh bąs fir gun ghrąs fir! - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html