1st Manned Moon Landing - 45 Years Ago

[Scuffers]

Lost soul said:

I am sure Airbus being primarily French did not help BA

to be fair to Airbus, the cost of DA support is a pretty fixed number, when there were 14 flying, per plane it was manageable, but with only 7 and one operator, it all just got too much.

if all the opposition (mostly Yank driven) in it's early days had not killed it, and there were a 100 of them, then it would have been a very different story, but much as Apollo was JFK's dream, so was the Boeing 2707.

in the mean time, they did all they could to kill off Concorde

[Eric Mc]

The 2707 was always a rather half-hearted project. Nobody was really fully committed to it and I feel the US only went ahead with it because they were (slightly) worried they might be left behind by Concorde AND the TU-144.

In the end, the enthusiasm waned as the technical problems mounted and it was canned.
The fact that Boeing had never built a supersonic aircraft made them a rather strange choice as well.

In the end, the commitment to Vietnam had a lot to do with both the cancellation of the 2707 AND the curtailment of the Apollo missions.

[Dr Jekyll]

Eric Mc said:

Cash Flow and Profit are different concepts. I was talking about Profit.

And I was emphasising that BA were able to claim (correctly) that they were making profits on their Concorde operations - but only because they were given massive taxpayer assistance by not having to foot the full cost of the aircraft.

What I don't understand is your implication that it would not have been worth BA flying their Concordes if the original purchase price had been higher.

My point is that depreciation would have been exactly the same whether they flew the aircraft or not. If the depreciation had been higher the operating surplus might have simply reduced the loss rather than contributed to a profit. But the operating surplus would still be worth having.

[Eric Mc]

Dr Jekyll said:

What I don't understand is your implication that it would not have been worth BA flying their Concordes if the original purchase price had been higher.

My point is that depreciation would have been exactly the same whether they flew the aircraft or not. If the depreciation had been higher the operating surplus might have simply reduced the loss rather than contributed to a profit. But the operating surplus would still be worth having.

Nowhere did I mention anything about BA considering it not being worthwhile flying Concorde.

All I'm saying is that their claim to be able to operate the aircraft profitably was only possible because of the favourable terms on which they acquired them.

I also stated that the notion of profitable operations of Concorde got hardly a mention for the first 8 years they were flying them.

They only felt they had to make statements about how "profitable" the operations were when potential investors in the soon to be privatised airline started asking questions.

If you want the honour of having "the last word" on Concorde in this thread, you can. I won't make any more mention of Concorde as it is dragging the topic too far off the original subject.

[Lost soul]

Scuffers said:

Lost soul said:

I am sure Airbus being primarily French did not help BA

to be fair to Airbus, the cost of DA support is a pretty fixed number, when there were 14 flying, per plane it was manageable, but with only 7 and one operator, it all just got too much.

Point taken BUT what would have happened if BA had stopped flying Concord leaving only Air France