By Ed Perkins, Tribune Media Services, 02/19/99

My wife and I recently flew the Concorde from New York to Paris in three and a half hours. We left JFK at 10 a.m., and after a six-hour time change, arrived at Charles DeGaulle just before 8 p.m. Unfortunately, very few travelers will be able to share that experience for the foreseeable future: Regular Concorde fares are stratospherically high, and the outlook for a more efficient supersonic transport is dim.

There's no question about the appeal of supersonic flight. Crossing the Atlantic in less than four hours was wonderful -- we deplaned feeling rested, without the usual stiffness and fatigue of a sleepless night in a plane seat. If we had any question about the benefits of that speed, our return trip dispelled them. Even though we were in reasonably comfortable seats, the 12-hour nonstop from Paris to Oakland seemed endless, and we were totally exhausted when we finally arrived.

Our Concorde trip came about because a friend of ours, who ran a Concorde charter tour from New York to South America and back, sold seats on the ferry flight back to Paris for less than 10 percent of the usual one-way Concorde fare. Normally, at a regular fare in excess of $5,000, Concorde travel is the exclusive province of rock stars, pro athletes and business travelers whose companies have bottomless travel-expense pockets. To ordinary vacation travelers, the idea of paying regular Concorde fares is simply bizarre.

Those fares are high for a reason: The Concorde is an extremely expensive plane to operate. At only 100 passengers, it's much too small to be economical in today's market, and it consumes about two and a half times as much fuel, per person, as a 747. Those high fares, in turn, have limited the plane's regular use to just two prime transatlantic routes: New York to London and New York to Paris.

Ever since the Concorde was first announced, airplane manufacturers such as Boeing and Airbus have been trying to figure out a way to cut the costs of supersonic travel. A truly efficient supersonic transport, with Economy as well as Business or First Class seating, would find a vast market. Even at a fare premium of, perhaps, 20 percent over present levels, I'm sure that many travelers -- including vacation travelers -- would flock to supersonic flight. An efficient, long-range SST, for example, could cut that 12-hour flight from Paris to Oakland to about seven hours -- traveling at more than 1,200 miles an hour over the North Atlantic and northern Canada, throttling back to 600 miles an hour (to avoid sonic boom) over southern Alberta and the western United States. I know I'd pay extra; I believe many others would, as well.

Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that we'll have that option, at least for several decades. Although Boeing and the U.S. government have been working steadily on new SST designs for more than 25 years, the goal remains elusive. In fact, recent announcements indicate that the current outlook is even more pessimistic than it appeared to be 10 and 20 years ago. As a result, the United States has recently scaled back its SST research and development effort.

The only new supersonic civilian airplane we're likely to see in the next 10 to 20 years will be a small model for corporate use. For the most part, corporate jets have become an ego-trip perk for overpaid CEOs, who don't care how much their companies pay for their trips. Without a cost constraint, those CEOs will probably get their corporate SSTs with which they can one-up their competitors. But those of us who buy tickets will undoubtedly remain consigned to flying at less then the speed of sound -- unless we happen to find the return trip of another Concorde charter.

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© 1998 Consumers Union
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