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Flights of Fancy
Kirby's Korner · September 1, 2000

We may be at the end of an era in the history of manned flight. If so, I, for one, find it sad.

The French and British governments this week formally suspended flights of the Concorde, three weeks after an Air France Concorde crashed on takeoff, killing 113 people.

Air France has not flown its fleet of the sleek white airplanes since the July 25 accident; British Airways suspended operation of its Concorde fleet, following a recommendation from British government agencies, shortly before the British government formally acted.

The next day, British Airways said it will meet with experts, including the Concorde's manufacturer, in an attempt to win back certification for the airliner. But many experts think the Concorde will never fly again.

I'm not an airline safety expert and am not qualified to judge whether the carrier should fly again based on its safety record alone. My research, though, shows only one other serious incident in the airline's 25 years of commercial flights -- and nothing that has led to an accident before.

(It is true, however, that most of the current airliners have flown far longer than predicted when they first were put into service.)

What will bother me, if this is the end of the Concorde's flight, is that we as a species will have stopped flying faster than sound. We'll still have military craft and space craft, but the average citizen will have lost an opportunity.

Okay, the Concorde was never for the average. The three and a half hour Atlantic crossing costs thousands of dollars. But it was cheaper than a military career or training for a shuttle mission.

And, true, the Concorde was not the first commercial supersonic aircraft. That honor belongs to an airplane from the Soviet Union, the Tu-144. But it had stopped flying by the time the Concorde was flying commercially.

The Concorde has never been a commercial success. It is profitable on an operating basis, but it has never paid back the development costs -- borne largely by the British and French governments.

Some companies and organizations, including NASA, are looking into developing a new generation supersonic transport. To try to solve the problem of becoming profitable, talk is that any airplane developed will carry 250 passengers, rather than the Concorde's 100.

Some airline experts, including NASA officials, question whether the development is worth the cost. Will people pay thousands of dollars for a ticket just to save a few hours of time?

The real audience for the developing aircraft seems to be transpacific travelers, a flight much longer than the Washington-London or Washington-Paris routes most recently covered by the Concorde.

Researching this column brought back forgotten memories, mainly showing a lack of need for the Concorde: Braniff's (subsonic) Concorde route from Washington to Dallas in 1979 and 1980, discontinued for lack of use; Continental, TWA, and Pan Am deciding not to purchase the airliner; discontinued service to Bahrain and Singapore and, later, to Caracas and Rio.

Early predictions of Concorde backers were that at least 200 of the carriers would operate globally. There have never been more than 10 percent of that figure.

All of which indicates that the world may not need a supersonic commercial craft when looked at as a business or financial enterprise.

But humanity needs the adventure and the challenge. The end of that dream may be what we've gotten this week instead.

David Kirby is the founding editor of Interactive Travel Report and the content manager at startup company iJet.com. His column appears on Friday. You can reach him at david@ticked.com.