November 24 2019, 06:41

I visited both the Concorde and the Tu-144, the only two supersonic airliners that were phased out of the market as untimely.

From 1969 to 1979, BAC made 20 Concordes (14 for commercial services), which performed 269 flights, of which 168 were supersonic. Decommissioned in 2003. During its service, Concorde transported 2.5 million passengers.

From 1968 to 1983, Tupolev made 16 aircraft, which performed 102 flights, 55 of which carried passengers. In total, 3284 passengers were transported.

Overall, the situation is much like the Buran-Shuttle scenario. There too, the project did not “take off” due to economic reasons, but at least the American shuttle functioned to some extent (135 missions), while Buran was built just for show (one mission).