@ Boyle wrote
The U.S. SST program was scuttled in part by the Environmental lobby.
They convinced congress that the contrails would lead to global cooling.
Really, look it up.
And they pressured congress to prohibit supersonic flight over the country because of the feared booms.
The UK is so small, they would rarely make booms over its own country, so of course it wasn’t an issue. Imagine if the U.S. had an exclusive product and wanted to make daily booms over the UK, do you mean to say parliament and county councils would have been okay with that? Of course not.
The UK fanboys and conspiracy nutters love to squawk about protectionism,
Nonsense, the laws dealt with all SST designs, they affected the Concorde because it was the only one being built.
The same group always forgets that the U.S. didn’t block other UK aircraft of the period, there were a lot of Viscounts sold in North America, and two airlines used many BAC 1-11s as well. The US was also a key market for business aircraft..Doves and Hurons in the 50s, DH 125s in the 60s-90s, Jetstreams (both before and after the HP collapse), and lots of Shorts 330s and 360s. New York Airways was a key customer for Rotodynes and Kaman wanted to build them, but the UK government, predictably, cancelled it.
Doesn’t sound very protectionist to me.
What makes a good airliner?
Sorry kids, it’s not looks.
One thing matters…it’s ability to make a profit for the operator.
Because of inherent design limitations, fuel, and other matters, the Concorde was not cost effective, otherwise other non US airlines would have flown it on over water routes. So instead of blaming the US,ask why Australian, Asian, and middle eastern airlines never flew it.
One could argue that many UK airline designs were designed too closely for the UK airlines (read Imperial Airways, later BOAC, but it also applies to BEA) and their heavily subsidized routes, where showing the flag in a UK design was more important than making a profit. If you make good, but less profitable aircraft, you’ll have a hard time selling them to non native carriers in the face of more competitive aircraft designed from the ground up to make money. Examine the history of the Trident vs the 727 as a prime example. The trend started long before Boeing began building jets..while Douglas was turning out flying busses like DC-2s and 3s, (and 4-6s post war) UK builders were preoccupied with building planes to link the Empire, which, given the few customers of the day and their expected needs, meant statehood, stewards, table linens and steamship line thinking. Any wonder why airlines like KLM bought Douglas ships instead of wooden de Havillands?
The Concorde was a neat engineering feat, but in its role as a money maker, it was deficient.
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