Sander Vesik writes:
In sci.space.policy jimmydevice wrote:
kevin wrote:

In article ,
says...

Concorde -never- cut it. It's a perfect example of creating a service
without looking into the market for it.


Concorde *did* show an operational profit for many years. People were
willing to pay for speed, service, and snob-appeal.

R&D expenses had to be written-off. It was expensive to design and
build. That's not uncommon in systems that advance the state of the art.

It took a while to learn how to operate and market Concorde effectively.
Changing times ended her career. But in between, she flew profitably.
Did it ever make back it's initial development investment?
Was it a Rah-Rah we beat the US, screw the UK and French taxpayers?

It did not end up brining back the development money, largely because
the production was halted really early on. It was not designed or
intended to not bring the money back - it was just not designed to
bring it back over just slightly more than 60 planes.

Concorde was not profitable. But what we gained with Concorde, was a
technical and an organizational expertize that has been put in very
profitable work in AirBus.

Had there been no Concorde, an European corporation like Airbus would
not have been competing and beating Boeing.

--
__Pascal_Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
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Do not adjust your mind, there is a fault in reality.