Concorde: profitable at last

Much coverage of the swansong of the Concorde, everything from the paeans to the pans (such as the NY Times on JFK's deafened neighbors' glee). Here's yet another angle:

It was said to have no commercial future, but in the twilight of its flying life Concorde has emerged as one of the biggest money-spinners for British Airways, earning the airline as much as £50m in the past six months.

In Concorde’s final week alone BA is thought to have made about £6m in profit as customers vied for the cachet of being on board one of the last scheduled flights to travel through the sound barrier. . .

Concorde, which made its last scheduled flight on Friday, never recovered its £2 billion development costs and only sporadically made profits since its first commercial flight 27 years ago. Last April, on the day that BA announced Concorde’s retirement, only 20 of the plane’s 100 seats were filled. Since then virtually every flight has been fully booked. . .

Aviation analysts believe that only 30 of Concorde’s seats need to be filled for a flight to break even. That means BA made a profit of more than £580,000 on each transatlantic round trip during the airliner’s final days. . .

However, the overall profits the airline has made in the past six months pale in comparison to the £84m cost of writing off Concorde. This takes into account a multi-million-pound refurbishment by Sir Terence Conran and the cost of winding down operations.

Posted by David on October 25, 2003 10:23 PM