Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "WHAT’s Going On with BOOM Supersonic?! Will it Fail?" video.

  1. You should be very well aware of the old saying that "The way to make a pile of money in aviation is to start with a mountain of money." In other words what ever you are going to invest in aviation you are not going to make as much money as the hype suggests. HOWEVER that does not mean you can't make money. There's a really great documentary that was put out after Concorde was retired that was done with the help of the pilots. I'm an aerospace engineer and a pilot so I found the technical stuff pretty interesting, but what EVERY business or economics student should do as a case study was how the pilots saved Concorde. Sorry for the long answer below, but its actually an important part of aviation history. The first few years Concorde was terrible financial losses. There was no way to make money and they were about to shut it down. The pilots responded by telling management how that wasn't possible because the planes were full on almost every flight. So British Airways management challenge their pilots to run Concorde and if they didn't make money it was over. The pilots then did one of the greatest examples of customer/market analysis ever. They looked at their users and found this odd group who dominated ticket sales. They'd fly across the Atlantic and then almost immediately fly back with some doing it several times a week. So they asked who these people why they used Concorde that way. It turned out they were mostly lawyers working for major banks and corporations. This was BEFORE the internet and big contracts needed to be done in person. Just as the internet sped up how we all communicate now, Concorde sped up the work of these people enormously and they put a premium value on it. The pilots asked these people DIRECTLY (not via intermediaries but direct) what they thought a ticket on Concorde was worth and 2 things stunned them. First these people had no idea what the tickets cost as their secretaries were the ones arranging flights and purchasing the tickets. Second the value they came back with stunned everyone. if you go look back at the ticket prices there was this massive jump in the early days and every one said it would drive away the customers. IT DIDN'T because the main users valued the tickets that much. The pilots then asked what would make these customers business even better. The result was installing nice highly secure offices for people to meet in the terminals. So these frequent users could fly across the Atlantic, meet their clients in the terminal without having to go through customs and then fly back. For about 25 years Concorde was British Airways most RELIABLE and profitable division. It simply didn't matter what the economic situation in America or Europe was those contracts had to be negotiated and Concorde was the most efficient way to get that done. What killed Concorde was a combination of the Internet, Osama Bin Laden and Airbus. The internet reduced the amount of work needed to be done in person. On 9/11 Concorde lost around 50% of some of its most frequent users because they all worked in the towers. Airbus hated the Concorde and wanted people focussed on the A380. As owners of the Concorde Intellectual Property they simply refused to service the aircraft. Richard Branson eve offered to by the fleet and keep it going, which means he knew it could make money. Airbus said "NO!" When they stopped flying most of the Concorde fleet had flown less that 25% of their design lifetime. Again sorry for the long answer but the story of Concorde needs to be told. You probably have a way better chance of meeting those pilots than I do. If they can correct any of what I've written I will defer to their knowledge of what happened.
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  2. Following but less about Concordes history. After I graduated I did 2-1/2 years of research into ramjets & scramjets (Mach 2 -7 flight). Some of the first papers I read were on the Concorde SNECMA Olympus engines and their inlets. Those inlets were a masterpiece of 1960s technology. Even by todays standards they are brilliant. Consider that nobody has done better. In college I did classes in aircraft propulsion and inlet design geometry. The simplest way to put it is the inlet makes the engine work and that includes bot subsonic and supersonic. Its the inlet geometry that affects the air flow before it reaches the first of the compressor stages. Its a lot like racing cars. Those guys spend massive amount of time & effort getting air into the engine. I've been around those guys and they describe it like "if you can't get the air into the engine nothing else matters." Jet engines are the same. If you have a look at your 737 engines you'll notice the inlets are flat along the bottom edge. That's NOT for ground clearance. If you look closer it also has a different profile than the top and sides. That's to prevent compressor stall when you pull back on the yoke at take off. The top and sides are optimised for cruise at altitude. Everything about that part of of the inlet geometry is about minimising drag and getting the air into the engine at exactly the right pressure for the fan to operate at maximum efficiency. I did my degree in the late 80s just as CFD was becoming available. In fact my college the U. of Illinois was a world leader as we had CRAY Supercomputers. There were 2 areas for aircraft the postgrads were into and that was wingtip design for drag reduction and engine inlet design for efficiency. And fun fact the speed limit for the Concorde of about Mach 2.2 wasn't an issue of aerodynamics or engines it was limited by aerothermodynamic heating of the air frame. If they went much above Mach 2.2 the metals the plane was built from risked degrading to the point where it could fail. Go check a lot of the fighters form that time period and they too had the same limits. If you look at the Mig 25 Foxbat that could go faster. They basically had to rebuilt the engines after going above Mach 2.7 on any flight. Its one of the things that made the SR-71 so incredibly special. You might actually find the speed limits of the Sonic Boom have more to do with aerothermodynamic effects on the airframe than they let on. Even Carbon fibre and the resins used get effected by temperature.
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