Supersonic Commercial Aircraft Case Study

592 Words2 Pages

Supersonic commercial aircraft like Concorde and Tupolev Tu-144 faces a lot of drawbacks and design challenges, which include pesky sonic booms during flight, high cost to develop, safety issue, great weight, increased in cost per seat over subsonic airline, and insatiable fuel consumption.
Sonic booms. A sonic boom is a sound created by a supersonic aircraft traveling through the air at a speed faster than the speed of sound. During the flight, the supersonic aircraft tends to generate a massive amount of sound energy, which was so disruptive that several countries have to restrict or completely prohibit such aircraft from flying over land (Kachoria, 2013). Nonetheless, countries like the United State, Great Britain and France had allowed Trans-Atlantic flights only.
High cost. The cost of developing a supersonic commercial aircraft (Concorde) is around £1.870 billion in the 1950’s, which was funded by the France and the British government as report by Concordesst website and it is 6 times the cost of developing a Boeing B747 ($300 million) (Gates, 2010). Supersonic commercial air...

More about Supersonic Commercial Aircraft Case Study

Open Document