oh well suppose I’ll have my 3 pennoth worth on the subject..
firstly take away the emotion of it all.. yes I totally agree that its a fabulous looking a/c a great technological achievement that was ‘invented’ 30 years ago.. a great British/French achievment etc etc..
1) why hasn’t anyone built a replacement.. not because they can’t but because its not viable.
2) why has it been taken out of service? because its a pain in the a**se for the support agencies and the airlines to support and operate. From a spares perspective you have a handful of unique a/c which are technologicaly a little bit ‘old hat’… basic maths shows that the more of an item you produce, the lower the cost and vice-versa… so supporting spares for the a small number of a/c isn’t viable for the suppliers,, and thats not just Airbus/Bae, and paying for them even less so for the operator.
3) reliability/maintenance.. the a/c requires a huge amount of maintenance compared to modern aircraft.. I dont have the figures but I’m sure that the ratio of engineers and support staff to a/c would be horrendous compared to a 777 or Airbus… and that just adds to the operating cost
4) due to the age of the a/c and the technolgy involved, they aren’t that reliable.. you could not run a single a/c operation with any sort of regularity… again look at the number of standby a/c on a modern a/c fleet… BA is seen as being over generous having 1 737 ‘spare’ to cover 30 a/c operating..most of the budget airlines run with no ‘stand-by’… Concorde normally had to have at least 1 back-up for every flight… you’d have 1 a/c in maint and then operate 3 services with 6 a/c… I know at times they may’ve upped the flying a bit but that was the general rule…. another prob with keeping one a/c is that it would spend a lot of time just parked-up which is the worst thing to do if you’re trying to keep an a/c, or any machine servicable.. seals dry out etc etc..
5) despite the public statements about how long they planned to operate the a/c, the a/c has been a bit of a thorn in the side of the airlines and the decision by the manufacturers not to support the a/c gave AF/BA an easy way out…
6) Branson to operate them? he’d face the same probs as above ref spares, costs, reliability etc plus the addit cost of setting up a support structure from scratch…. also following the way that he loves to court publicity, would you sell him one?? can’t you imagine the headlines the first time that he had a problem with it.. something along the lines of “BA stitched me up” I suspect..
Please don’t think that I’m some sort of anti-Concorde bod.. I’ve flown on her, love the a/c, love the idea of it all, but the reality of it all isn’t so good…
Neil.
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