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It's only been a few years! These things take years of development.
The concept of Concorde was first considered in a time when the future direction of air travel was uncertain. The first passenger jets had been introduced and it was not known whether speed or capacity would be the crucial factor in air travel of the future.
After years of developement, Concorde took it's first test flight in 1969 - it didn't actually enter service until 1976!
By this time the Boeing 747 'Jumbo Jet' had already been in service some 6 or 7 years (1969 or '70 - can't remember off the top of my head) - a 'wide bodied' jet, travelling slower, but carrying a much larger number of passengers.
So who won out in the end?
There were, I think, 8 Concordes built. And the only operators were the (then) nationalised state airlines of the two countries that built it - France and Britain. There were no orders from other airlines, and no other Concordes sold.
Meanwhile, the number of 747's that were built (then) ran into the hundreds, and they were sold to and operated by airlines all over the world.
So in the end, high speed lost out to high capacity in the economics of global air travel.
It is still the same today, as demonstrated by the next generation of 'Super Jumbos' from Boeing and the new market leader, Airbus.
There is still no imminent replacement or successor to the Concorde. Though there are the occasional ideas for HOTOL-type craft that come and go - I believe Branson is planning one of these at the moment.
If Clanad is along later, he may be able to add alot more!
I am aware that it has only been over two years since the last concorde flew. However, I do feel that the new Airbus A380 does not carry the same majesty as concorde.
Your point that not many airliners placed orders for the concorde; however, I feel that more airlines would order a new improved concorde if one were to be reintroduced.
As far as I know (I may be wrong), there were 14 concordes in all: ( 6 sole BA, one joint BA and Singapore Airlines and 7 Air France). I just remember seeing a BA concorde take off one evening with afterburner and thinking "Wow....."
There were orders for hundreds of Concordes when it was still in the development phase. By the time any got to being built all orders had disappeared and, as brachiopod says, Britain and France had to bare the costs. Supersonic passenger air travel was expensive then and has never gotten any cheaper, today its unfeasibly uneconomic for private companies to do, especially due to fuel costs for travelling supersonic. (Having a few Concorde safety problems and a crash didn't help either). There are no plans for another supersonic airliner now. Airbus has gone the route of maximum capacity/long distance while Boeing are having other ideas and are going with smaller aircraft running shorter, more frequent flights.
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i read in new scientist a few weeks ago that several variants of super sonic jets are already being developed. some with lower fuel consumption, which i believe was a major flaw in concorde, and some with less noise pollution. these jets are being designed more towards the business user rather than the commercial airlines as far as my memory serves
There could have been a replacement for Concorde years ago. In fact the final specification for Concorde was so degraded compared with the original (which is why all the world's airlines cancelled their purchase options) that Boeing or Macdonald-Douglas could have built one in parallel with the original.
But there was/is no point. A supersonic transport plane (SST) flying in the atmosphere cannot be viable because it can fly only over open water; the sonic boom disqualifies it from flying over populated land. This leaves the Atlantc as its only useful route. Try plotting a track across the Pacific from San Francisco to Tokyo, giving a wide berth to land (the sonic boom footprint is many miles wide) and you'll see what I mean.
When Concorde was squeezing through Parliament on the basis that it would cost �143M and we would sell 450 of them to the world's airlines (it cost 8 times as much and we sold not one) politicians who were either ignorant or liars were telling us that it would cut down the flight-time to Australia, a daft idea when you consider that it would have to take the sea route.
When passengers next fly supersonic they will be rocket-propelled above the atmosphere where there is no sonic boom. Concorde was the most beautiful aircraft ever built. But it was never a professional airliner, merely a politician's toy.
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