With a POD starting from January 1, 1960, your challenge is to make supersonic travel (SST) as the most popular way of air travel, even as the oil crises of 1973-74 and 1979-82 happen as scheduled.

Note: please cite your sources. Thank you! :)
 
Not really.... The way I see it, it was not just a question of high oil prices. Neither was it about the sonic boom and how to handle it. It was just a Mather of changing times. When the Concorde and its counterparts were developed, the prevailing cultural theme was of progress at all costs. If you can shoot a rocket to the moon, you did so, regardless the cost. If you could pull a mega-thoroughfare through your city, you didn't care how many historical neighborhoods you had to demolish in the progress. By the time the aircraft flew, progress for progress' sake had been surpassed by bans on DTT and civil rights acts. In 1965, while the prototype of the Concorde was being built, the most popular TV series was 'Thunderbirds', yet the next year came 'Star Trek' with its Prime Directive.... And as the Concorde got ready to fly 100 passengers across the Atlantic in 3 hours, Boeing's new 747 took 9 hours for the trip, but carried 350 passengers at once....

In the end, it was telling how the airlines that operated the only two operational SST types of aircraft, The Concorde and Tu-144, struggled to find a purposeful use for them.
 
I think the Concorde with service starting in (?) 1979 (?)
[three years earlier; the first commercial flights took place on Jan. 21, 1976]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/luxury/travel/98151/concorde-40-fascinating-facts.html
is a clear example that there are markets where people will pay more for supersonic transport.

Maybe if the Asian tiger economies ramp up just a little bit earlier, more than just a handful of routes against the Pacific?

PS I think the second energy crisis was mainly just in 1979
 
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I think majority is too much, but certainly a lot mope Concordes could have been sold and operated if it had entered service before 1973. With more in service someone would hit on the profitable market of first class travel long before OTL when it wasn't figured out until about 5 year after entering service.
 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/luxury/travel/98151/concorde-40-fascinating-facts.html

34. Though it has fallen from public consciousness, Russia’s TU-144 supersonic aircraft commenced service before Concorde. It made its maiden flight on December 31, 1968, two months before Concorde, and went into service delivering cargo the following year. It first flew passengers in 1977 and after crashing twice was withdrawn from commercial service in 1985.
Alright, not a great safety record, but then the McDonnell Douglas didn't have a great safety record during its first ten years either (admittedly probably with a lot more flights).

Maybe if Brezhnev had been just as much a reformer as Khrushchev? Say if he had experimented with being a delegator not a dumper, made a conscious decision not to lead from fear, but instead find things people are doing well and encourage them to do more of it (just good principles of modern business. Don't know that he didn't do this!)
 
Any ideas, anyone?
The only thing Concorde had going for it was speed. For the same price of a first class ticket on a conventional jet you can get much better accommodations.

Here's Concorde seating.

CON28.jpg


Here's what you get for the same price on British Airways today.

British_Airways_Bu_2491883a.jpg


I'd rather fly a little slower, watch a movie and enjoy the service than sit in that cramped Concorde cabin.

SST doesn't address the biggest time issues, that of having to arrive at the airport 3+ hours before your flight, and then the good odds of another hour or more of tarmac holds, clearing customs and baggage claim. This is the drag that the wealthy traveler wants to skip, the actual flight time where you can catch up on work or rest isn't the issue.
 
a little slower

Hate to see your definition of 'a lot slower'. Modern airliners, not old ones like the 747, fly at 1/3 of the Concorde speed which is why they need all that luxury shit as they keep you captive for half a day.

SST doesn't address the biggest time issues, that of having to arrive at the airport 3+ hours before your flight, and then the good odds of another hour or more of tarmac holds, clearing customs and baggage claim. This is the drag that the wealthy traveler wants to skip, the actual flight time where you can catch up on work or rest isn't the issue.

Don't confuse the flying experience of regular people with that of rich people who get express check in, express security, lounge membership, car services and all that sort of thing that makes the experience better. If Concorde was prevalent in the post 9/11 world it would probabaly be separated out of the regular airports and put into executive airports
 
Alright, not a great safety record, but then the McDonnell Douglas didn't have a great safety record during its first ten years either (admittedly probably with a lot more flights).

Maybe if Brezhnev had been just as much a reformer as Khrushchev? Say if he had experimented with being a delegator not a dumper, made a conscious decision not to lead from fear, but instead find things people are doing well and encourage them to do more of it (just good principles of modern business. Don't know that he didn't do this!)

Tu-144 was never really in commercial service in a Western sense. IIRC it had very infrequent flights, mostly empty, and was operated at a loss purely as a prestige project. Apparently it was a nightmare as a passenger, as the engine noise was so loud you had to shout to be heard by the person sitting next to you.

To make SST popular, I think you need to have the US versions going ahead. SST funding was killed by Congress in 1971, but it seems there was still a lot of support for it. One story has it that Senator Clinton P. Anderson helped organise support against SST in the Senate in revenge for the killing of funding for the NERVA nuclear rocket. Maybe having NERVA funded a bit longer or giving Anderson some alternative pork to chew on could see the Senate decision reversed and the House following their lead. I suspect political concerns over sonic booms overflying the US would be lessened if there's a US option in the air, rather than it being some foreign aircraft breaking windows in the flyover states (but maybe that's my European prejudices..!). In that case, maybe we'd see PanAm Boeing-2707s in the skies by the late 1970s...

24544623951_7988b3aa98_b.jpg
 
51TubHWeV8L.jpg


This book written by a former Wall Street Journal reporter and published in 1995 says

the Boeing 747 almost bankrupted Boeing itself, and was the beginning of the end for Pan Am. In additional, Pan Am's poorly thought out merger with National Airlines in the late '70s dealt another major blow to the airline.
 
it was the sst that broke the bank, the 747 was a budget program. boeing thought it would be used for fright after the sst came on line
 
Hate to see your definition of 'a lot slower'. Modern airliners, not old ones like the 747, fly at 1/3 of the Concorde speed which is why they need all that luxury shit as they keep you captive for half a day.



Don't confuse the flying experience of regular people with that of rich people who get express check in, express security, lounge membership, car services and all that sort of thing that makes the experience better. If Concorde was prevalent in the post 9/11 world it would probabaly be separated out of the regular airports and put into executive airports
Yep.. Plus today those with enough money can fly in their own jet's (or jet's they have rented or chartered) via executive airport terminals (less delays,) fly direct routes (so no transfers,) fewer hassles with luggage etc. If I had to chose between traveling on my own subsonic jet or on a scheduled comercial supersonic jet with other passengers I expect I would typically choose my own subsonic jet.
 
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