With the first flight of Concorde on 2nd of March, 1969; the aviation industry will make another major advancement in the service offered to the travelling public. In this respect, the main considerations have not changed since commercial aviation began. They are safety, comfort and speed. In the following paragraphs, we shall be discussing the improvement that has been made in those areas.
Safety levels are firmly fizzed by the certificating authority. Each new aircraft must achieve equivalent levels of safety to those of current aircraft and must also show distinct improvements in important areas. Airlines too are constantly improving their methods, over the years of the current satisfactory position. Concorde will maintain this trend, indeed it must do so if it is to enter airline service.
Comfort
It is arguable that standards of comfort vary little between different aircraft ( although standards of cabin service vary between airline), and Concorde should certainly offer a good standard. The narrower fuselage is a price which has to be paid for the higher speed, at least on first generation supersonic transports, but careful attention to interior layouts will minimize this effect.
Speed
Speed will always sell, provided that the other requirements have not been compromised. Here we see a bold but rational step which is in line with the trends of recent years. As in the past, large numbers of passengers will move to the competitive schedules. Even 10 minutes saved on a 3, 000 mile journey is considered to be a commercial advantage. When one saves 3 hours, the attraction becomes overwhelming.
If we offer the traveller speed, we must also offer regularity. He expects to leave and to arrive on time. Already, the airlines achieve over 98% arrival regularity with a very small number of diversions occuring due to fog. Weather has almost ceased to be a consideration and with the development of all-weather landing, the diversion to an alternate airfield will become a very rare occurrence.
Hitches and resolutions
The airlines policy will be to fly their aircraft to minimize this effects and this is no more platitude. We too live under the airways. Controlled boom procedures will be flown, manoeuvring (which affects the boom) will be restricted, and routes will be chosen carefully.
As aircraft acquire new capabilities (inertial navigation, all weather operation and so on) the equipment which they carry becomes complex. Much of it is duplicated or even triplicated. The aircraft with it's systems and supporting equipment becomes very expensive. Here we face a problem which has been growing with the years: how to keep a complicated aircraft serviceable as it operates over the world-wide network. The airline have worked closely with the manufacturer to ensure that past causes of unserviceability have been eliminated, and every effort had been made to design for reliability.
However, equipment failures will occur, and if delays are not to be caused, rapid means of system checking and component replacement must be decided. There are the constraints of airborne test equipment weight, the impossibility of maintaining major base facilities at every station, the cost of replacement and the very tight schedules and these require a great deal of clever-thinking of maintenance. Time spent on the ground is an annoyance to the Passenger and a loss of revenue to the airline.
There is one significantly new feature of supersonic transport which has given rise to a great deal of controversy: the sonic boom. This has been variously described as a noise ranging from the unbearable to the unnoticeable often by those who have no personal experience of the effect. My own experience is limited, but having heard booms of various intensities my view is that the sound would be unnoticed in the cities, heard in the villages and countryside......In most cases, as a thunderclap, and normally as a low rumble.
The airlines policy will be to fly their aircraft to minimize this effects and this is no more platitude. We too live under the airways. Controlled boom procedures will be flown, manoeuvring (which affects the boom) will be restricted, and routes will be chosen carefully.
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