cryptoshi2k21.bitcoin on Nostr: The #Concorde flew 100 passengers at Mach 2 and lost money on every single flight. ...
The #Concorde flew 100 passengers at Mach 2 and lost money on every single flight. Britain and France poured roughly £1.5 billion (1970s money) into a machine that carried fewer people than a 737, guzzled fuel at catastrophic rates, and served routes so thin that only 14 aircraft ever entered commercial service. Politicians on both sides of the Channel called it a symbol of European technological supremacy. Mises identified this kind of calculation problem before the first rivet hit aluminum: governments that fund projects through taxation and political prestige rather than profit and loss sever the feedback loop that tells you whether you're creating value or destroying it.
British Airways and Air France never chose the Concorde. Governments handed them the planes at artificially subsidized prices in 1976 because the aircraft had already become a political liability too embarrassing to ground. No private investor running real capital, his own capital, funds a decade of development for a fleet of 14. The market verdict came in 1962 when the project started: supersonic passenger travel at that scale, with that technology, serving that narrow a clientele, destroyed more value than it created. Every year of flight from 1976 to 2003 confirmed it.
The Concorde didn't fail because of the 2000 crash, or 9/11, or aging airframes. Those were convenient exits. It failed because the economic calculation was wrong from the beginning, and no one with real skin in the game ever had to confront that fact until the subsidies dried up.
Published at
2026-08-27 14:08:41 CESTEvent JSON
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"content": "The #Concorde flew 100 passengers at Mach 2 and lost money on every single flight. Britain and France poured roughly £1.5 billion (1970s money) into a machine that carried fewer people than a 737, guzzled fuel at catastrophic rates, and served routes so thin that only 14 aircraft ever entered commercial service. Politicians on both sides of the Channel called it a symbol of European technological supremacy. Mises identified this kind of calculation problem before the first rivet hit aluminum: governments that fund projects through taxation and political prestige rather than profit and loss sever the feedback loop that tells you whether you're creating value or destroying it.\n\nBritish Airways and Air France never chose the Concorde. Governments handed them the planes at artificially subsidized prices in 1976 because the aircraft had already become a political liability too embarrassing to ground. No private investor running real capital, his own capital, funds a decade of development for a fleet of 14. The market verdict came in 1962 when the project started: supersonic passenger travel at that scale, with that technology, serving that narrow a clientele, destroyed more value than it created. Every year of flight from 1976 to 2003 confirmed it.\n\nThe Concorde didn't fail because of the 2000 crash, or 9/11, or aging airframes. Those were convenient exits. It failed because the economic calculation was wrong from the beginning, and no one with real skin in the game ever had to confront that fact until the subsidies dried up. \n\n",
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