Conventional wisdom has always maintained that the big problem with Concorde is its lack of fuel efficiency. But how truly important is fuel economy?
A Concorde uses, during the course of a typical trans-Atlantic flight, about 5650 gallons of kerosene every hour. This translates to about 6 gallons of fuel per mile flown. A Boeing 747 consumes about 5 gallons of jet fuel per mile flown.
While this difference seems very small, remember that the Concorde can only carry a maximum of 100 passengers, whereas the 747 is typically configured to carry about 400 passengers. In terms of fuel use per passenger carried, one gallon of fuel on Concorde will take one passenger 16.7 miles, but on a 747 one passenger can travel 80 miles. The 747 is 4.8 times more fuel efficient than a Concorde (and more fuel efficient than two people sharing a private car, too!).
Let’s see what this operationally means in terms of a roundtrip flight across the Atlantic between London Heathrow and New York JFK, a distance of 3447 miles each way. If we use a cost per gallon of fuel as $1.15 (jet fuel is much cheaper than pump prices for petrol), it costs $474 per passenger for fuel on Concorde but only $99 on the 747.
The extra fuel cost on Concorde is less than $400. This is a trivial extra cost for a plane that sells only first class seats, and at up to $12,000 each. At a price like that, it really makes no difference at all whether the fuel costs $99 or $474. There is still over $11,500 gross profit on each of those tickets!
Let’s cost this another way. If Concorde flies roundtrip between London and New York, with all seats sold at full price, it can earn close on $1.2 million dollars. Subtract fuel costs of $47,400 and it still generates $1.15 million in positive earnings. A 747 flying full will earn about $800,000, with f
So what does this have to do with flying to Mexico?
A new Boeing 737 carries between 160 and 190 passengers. That’s a typical airplane for the trip from the continental US to Puerto Vallarta. At altitude, that plane burns just under one gallon of fuel per mile.
San Francisco to Puerto Vallarta is 2800 miles round trip. So, as an example, that trip burns approximately 2800 gallons of fuel.
Divided by 160 passengers, each passenger’s portion is just over 17 gallons to get to sunny Puerto Vallarta and back home.
Here’s the surprise. If you made the same trip in a Chevy Suburban averaging 12mpg, you would consume at least 230 gallons of fuel round trip! You’d have to load up 13 more people to be as fuel efficient as the airplane.
Or another way to compare it– for the amount of fuel it takes to make that trip in the Suburban one time you could fly 14 times!
Conventional wisdom has always maintained that the big problem with Concorde is its lack of fuel efficiency. But how truly important is fuel economy?
A Concorde uses, during the course of a typical trans-Atlantic flight, about 5650 gallons of kerosene every hour. This translates to about 6 gallons of fuel per mile flown. A Boeing 747 consumes about 5 gallons of jet fuel per mile flown.
While this difference seems very small, remember that the Concorde can only carry a maximum of 100 passengers, whereas the 747 is typically configured to carry about 400 passengers. In terms of fuel use per passenger carried, one gallon of fuel on Concorde will take one passenger 16.7 miles, but on a 747 one passenger can travel 80 miles. The 747 is 4.8 times more fuel efficient than a Concorde (and more fuel efficient than two people sharing a private car, too!).
Let’s see what this operationally means in terms of a roundtrip flight across the Atlantic between London Heathrow and New York JFK, a distance of 3447 miles each way. If we use a cost per gallon of fuel as $1.15 (jet fuel is much cheaper than pump prices for petrol), it costs $474 per passenger for fuel on Concorde but only $99 on the 747.
The extra fuel cost on Concorde is less than $400. This is a trivial extra cost for a plane that sells only first class seats, and at up to $12,000 each. At a price like that, it really makes no difference at all whether the fuel costs $99 or $474. There is still over $11,500 gross profit on each of those tickets!
Let’s cost this another way. If Concorde flies roundtrip between London and New York, with all seats sold at full price, it can earn close on $1.2 million dollars. Subtract fuel costs of $47,400 and it still generates $1.15 million in pos
The Concord was expensive to maintain and required alot of extra expenses too. The Concord was so loud that most airports forbid the thing to land or take off from them except in New York . I don’t think it landed in Los Angelas…(thinking out loud)
At one time it also was allowed to land in D.C., but did operate on other international routes out of London and Paris. There was a documentary recently on the last flight of the Concorde. It’s an ‘old’ plane with no fly-by-wire and little computer technology that did require a lot of maintainence. It was taken out of service because new FAA regulations would have been very costly to implement and it was nearing the end of it’s life expectancy. The high price was apparently driven by demand, as it usually flew with a full passenger load. France and Japan have announced they are jointly developing a replacement.
It takes more gallons of crude to produce a given number of gallons of aviation fuel than it does for the diesel fuel used in locomotives (and trucks and buses, also). A believe it is about 50% more but you can check me on this.
Junctionfan:
The Concorde never landed in LA for two reasons: !. It lacked the cruising range to fly from London to LA. 2. The plane was never allowed to fly supersonically over land due to the sonic boom produced. The plane would have to flown over the Artic in order to reach LA without flying over land.
If anyone develops a replacement supersonic transport, they will have to provide it with quiet engines. The Concorde made far more noise than any other jet when it made its’ landing approach to JFK Airport on Long Island.
France and Japan have said they are going to spend a $1M or two on STUDYING a possible replacement for the Concorde. Nobody really expects them ever to build anything.
What planes are flying these days between Altoona and Philadelphia? I rmember it used to be Alleghany, then USAir. What is it now and what planes are they using?
Of course I would always prefer the Broadway Limited any day. But sometimes I did have to fly.
The Suburban is more fuel efficient than the 747. The rate of fuel consumption in your example is 12 miles per gallon for the truck and .2 miles per gallon for the jet.
You are referring to the cost per passenger mile, which is different.
Actually the turbo jets of the Boeing 707s and DC-8s were faster jets speed wise than the current crop of turbo fans. Speed is not an important factor anymore for the airlines, fuel efficiency is…
The latest generation of fighter planes is capable of supersonic flight without the use of afterburners, which should help fuel usage and noise. Advanced composite construction has also come way down in cost. Europe has some really long flights like London to Sydney that could benefit from speed. They would need to get the passenger load up significantly for the thing to be viable.
a 747 was never desinged for a “short hop” that altoona to phily is in air miles… the 747 was designed more for transcontinantl and intercontinetal services… smaller aircraft such as the turbo-pro commuter aircraft fill that role…
also the last time i checked…i dont think the airport at altoona even has the runways that would let a monster like the 747 land let alone take off…
csx engineer