I was surprised that SQ was the only third party airline to have its livery on Concorde, as I saw plenty of pictures of Concordes with Braniff livery on on side.
Well, I did remember correctly that the service operated from Dallas (to NY or Washington). Subsonic only, and with lots of crazy adaptation to fit the crazy laws, like changing the aircraft registration number on each flight.
> I was surprised that SQ was the only third party airline to have its livery on Concorde, as I saw plenty of pictures of Concordes with Braniff livery on on side.
"Domestic flights between Dallas-Fort Worth and Washington Dulles airports were operated by Braniff with its own cockpit and cabin crews. During the domestic flights, the Braniff's registration numbers were affixed to the fuselage with temporary adhesive vinyl stickers. At Washington Dulles, the cockpit and cabin crews were replaced by ones from Air France and British Airways for the continued flight to Europe, and the temporary Braniff registration stickers were removed. This process was reversed after alighting in Washington Dulles from Europe for the domestic flights to Dallas-Fort Worth."
> Domestic flights between Dallas-Fort Worth and Washington Dulles airports were operated by Braniff with its own cockpit and cabin crews
Presumably own cockpit crew, but I had an instant vision of a replaceable cockpit module that was swapped out at Dulles.
Operating as an American owned airline between Dallas and Washington allowed them to take Dallas-Washington passengers, rather than only Dallas-Europe passengers. This was essential for the economics of the flight to work. At the time BA and AF had 3rd and 4th freedoms, and possibly 5th, but were not allowed to fly passengers on solely domestic itineraries -- a process called "Cabotage".
This page has some great stuff in it. Today I think about commercial airlines being so _optimized_ for efficiency in everything, I just can't imagine a US airline flying a Concorde overland at subsonic speeds. Assuming they flew Mach 0.95 then that's about at 25% speedup compared to today's subsonic cruise (0.78, although you might get faster than this if you're a big plane going a long distance, up in the low 0.80s). Also, the ticket prices they quote for that flight:
> 1979 Feb – May one way – $154 – $169 /Sept – Oct one way – $194
> 1980 Feb – one way – $227
so more than $900 today to fly one way on a flight that today you can have for $40 one way on a budget carrier! I guess I don't mind the extra hour it takes on a 737 or A321.
Although the more fair comparison would be to the competing prices at the time, not today's prices - any ticket was quite a bit more expensive in 1979-80, so that factors in.
Only adding, since you obviously get this, yet even with what seem like expensive ticket prices, the Concorde was still a difficult economic proposition. Even if you didn't pay for crew, fuel, airport fees, ground crew, maintenance, ect...
The Wikipedia article quotes a slightly different number than the article, yet it still amounts to a $200,000,000 plane (in modern $) with only 100 seats that eats fuel. Even at $900 (modern $) you quote, it would still take 2150 full flights to recoup the roll-away cost without anything else. (Interweb says base 737 is $90 million (modern $) with ~160 seats.)
And then there's the factor of 30x development program costs to consider (bathed in by Britain/France). The expected 350 orders, got 100, built 20. The decade extended development hell. The huge fuel cost jump on release. The Concorde is neat, it's just Murphy's Law was all over that plane.
Well, I did remember correctly that the service operated from Dallas (to NY or Washington). Subsonic only, and with lots of crazy adaptation to fit the crazy laws, like changing the aircraft registration number on each flight.
But all those pictures I saw were advertising drawings: https://www.heritageconcorde.com/braniff-airways-concorde-op...