How would supersonic success effect the airliner industry?

My first attempt at starting a thread, so please be nice to me!!!

The airliner industry (above 100 seats) has become dominated by Boeing and Airbus...could it all have been different?


January 1976. BA001 takes off from London Heathrow on its inaugural flight to New York JFK. Crowds of enthusiasts join U.S. Secretary of Transportation, William Coleman and Mayor of New York, Abraham D. Beame to welcome the plane. With the US still in the Breton Woods accord, and US support for Israel kept to a minimum, Saudi Light was trading at $3 a barrel.

After JFK's formation of the National Supersonic Transport committee, Najeeb Halaby, the director of the FAA, had presided over a heated early committee meeting. With the majority decision to play it safe, the committee was going to subsidize a 150 seat Mach 2.2 aircraft with a range of 4,000 miles. The Concorde-beating Mach 3, 250 seat option would receive a small amount of research funding however.

Back to 1976, BAC/Aérospatiale were playing catch up to Tupolev, but had a growing order book; and despite Boeing's Model 773 being a couple of years from launch, it had a healthy order book from loyal customers. Airbus (A300), Lockheed (L-1011) and McDonnell Douglas (DC-10) looked on cautiously to see how their their wide body, subsonic strategies would cope with the entrance of the supersonics...
 
Rich people's transport...

SST's will always be quite costly, IMVHO. So, with the R&D dollars going towards these planes--and the airlines buying them--air travel will likely remain something for the rich, or a once in a lifetime vacation for the middle class.

This might even turn into a good thing; with planes staying an expensive way to travel, perhaps there will be more reason to go with high speed rail.
 
SST's will always be quite costly, IMVHO. So, with the R&D dollars going towards these planes--and the airlines buying them--air travel will likely remain something for the rich, or a once in a lifetime vacation for the middle class.

This might even turn into a good thing; with planes staying an expensive way to travel, perhaps there will be more reason to go with high speed rail.

Actually if the US had not banned Concord from flying supersonic overland and put every obstacle they could in it's way it would have been the first supersonic airliner rather than the last.
 
Boeing would be out of business

While they fought for their 2707 hard, they came to realize later that it was a good thing they didn't build it. They had enough cash-flow problems getting the 747 into service. With an even larger, more expensive project they'd have likely gone bankrupt.


And you have the problem with nitrogen oxides and the ozone layer, which was the main environmental problem

the SSTs were designed when fuel was cheap. If you could somehow keep the oil-shock from happening, that'd help.

If the Concorde had better range, that'd help. (It couldn't do the pacific routes that could REALLY use SSTs.)

So... Fuel prices stay low. Concorde makes a (small) profit on transatlantic crossings. Braniff buys a couple. Concorde B is built (which might be able to do the Pacific). It becomes obvious that the total market is only about 100 planes, so no-one else enters the business, and the environmental lobby is less worried.

??
 
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