60 minutes rewind france went to the polls today to elect a new president there's no decision
and a runoff election must be held in two weeks to decide whether france continues the conservative
policies of de gaulle and pompadou or moves to the left under a socialist communist coalition
not the most important issue that will be decided but certainly one that will affect
anyone who travels by air is the future of this airplane concord the anglo-french supersonic
challenge to american control of commercial aviation concord means thousands of jobs in
france and across the channel in britain not only jobs but the prestige of britain and the glory of
france are at stake as well concord may just be the most extraordinarily costly joint venture
two nations ever launched for now just as concord seems to have proven itself
both nations are considering scrapping the plane a two and a half billion dollar misunderstanding
hmm
if you take away all the economics of airplane building and airline operations
and look at this plane as a piece of industrial engineering and design
and as a means of getting from a to b as quickly and as comfortably as possible then concord sends
all your 707s and jumbo jets back into the dark ages of flight back at a rate of mach 2
twice the speed of sound the cabin is much the same as any conventional jet it's a bit narrower
but the seats and the fittings are covered with glove leather so it just reeks of luxury and it's
less noisy and there's less vibration and the mere thought of traveling from london to new
york in three and a half hours makes any amount of money they spend on these planes seem worthwhile
no question to this traveler concord is the next best thing to not having to fly at all
but take a good look while you can this plane might become the world's most expensive souvenir
for as beautiful as concord looks as it blazes through the sky pushing 1400 miles an hour the
economics of commercial aviation have made it a two and a half billion dollar white
elephant and no airline really wants it but when concorde was first conceived back in the late 50s
commercial aviation was a license to print money speed was the holy grail and boeing was the first
to provide it with a 707 cutting the transatlantic trip from 12 hours to seven ladies and gentlemen
this is the captain speaking on behalf of the flight crew and myself i'd like to welcome you
aboard pan americans jet clipper to paris our flight today will take us to le bourget airport
cbs sent a reporter named bill leonard to cover that inaugural flight
and this year paris and what happens there is considerably closer to us in new york
because this is the year of the jet the year that paris is as close as hollywood
in a jet age paris is no longer something to dream about paris is next door and a
pan-american jet clipper flew us to that door in seven hours today leonard is 16 years older
he's everybody's boss in 60 minutes and it still takes seven hours to cross the atlantic
so in the 50s good planning dictated a plane that would take passengers beyond 600 miles an hour
beyond the sound barrier military aircraft had done it but for commercial aviation carrying
a hundred passengers or more economically a whole new technology had to be created
so with great certainty britain and france in 1962 signed an elaborate document pooling
their resources to design and build a plane to fly twice the speed of sound a plane that would
break the american hold on commercial aviation the contract was lodged with the international
court and provided no get out neither country could withdraw for technical or financial reasons
it was also the price of britain's entry into the common market and so concord was born
in bristol england they were to build the engine tail and nose and in toulouse fronts
the wings and fuselage it was to become the most tested and the most expensive commercial airplane
ever built there were a lot of bad jokes about two such different peoples combining on such
a sophisticated project like the camel really being a horse designed by a committee and some
called concord operation discord nevertheless the builders of the plane made good progress
in the 60s there was the assumption that we'd all be flying supersonically by now
the american aircraft industry late to the game feared a serious challenge to its domination of
the commercial aircraft business president kennedy authorized 750 million dollars for an american sst
a bigger and faster plane than concord it is my judgment that this government should immediately
commence a new program in partnership with private industry to develop at the earliest practical date
the prototype of a commercially successful supersonic transport superior to that being built
in any other country of the world after eight years and almost a billion dollars and not
much more than a mock-up the project was dropped killed by a powerful
environmentalist lobby and the vivid memory of enormous cost overruns on military aircraft
there was a temptation to drop concord as well but the anglo-french plane was far advanced and there
was a question of the russians two months before concorde's maiden flight they flew the tu-144
it was immediately dubbed concordski and there was good reason for the striking similarity
between the two planes an espionage ring working in toulouse had been supplying the soviets with
streams of information on the concorde's test bed performance two soviet agents were finally
taken off the austen to warsaw express with toothpaste tubes full of microfilm
five years later the russians paid dearly for their rush into the commercial
sst stakes at the paris air show at subsonic speed and overzealous soviet pilot lost control
foreigners were the least of the threat the cost of the plane was soaring from half a billion to a
billion dollars and still climbing but unless both countries agreed to cancel neither could
so discord was saving concord next the environmentalists not as powerful in britain
as the u.s and perhaps a bit extravagant in their fears england's green and pleasant
land would be devastated seagull eggs and airline stewardesses would become sterile
and the ancient and glorious cathedrals of england would first lose their magnificent
stained glass windows and then would all tumble down as a result of sonic boom
every eccentric got into the act complaining that cats had gone mad from
concord this days before the plane even flew and sound engineers found before concord's flight
that their meters had gone haywire the base notes of the great organs at evensong
were much more powerful than concord sonic boom but the builders heeded the pollution problems and
managed to reduce emissions and airport takeoff noise to those of a boeing 707 and it was agreed
that she would not break the sound barrier over populated land but concord was not to be the
next great leap in commercial aviation it was this the wide-bodied conventional jet the jumbo
upstairs downstairs they could carry 400 people great distances still less than 600 miles per
hour but great economy for the airlines cheap to operate and compared with concord's maximum
payload of 120 passengers a bargain price 28 million dollars each against concord's
projected 50 million dollars but against that concord would cross the atlantic four times a day
a jumbo jet only twice the airlines staked their future on the jumbo but the jumbos provided
more seats than passengers cheap charter fares stole millions from the scheduled airlines and
the american carriers concord's biggest potential customers went deeper into the red the british and
french launched a massive sales campaign for the plane sending it round the world showing the flag
showing that this was no mere peak into the future but a viable passenger aircraft that moves at
roughly the speed of a bullet they claim that in spite of its drawbacks limited capacity and range
huge fuel consumption that once fully operational no airline could afford to be without it at least
for first class travel on lucrative routes but the money men in the airline said no first air canada
and then by the dozens airlines let their options lapse the worst blow came when pan
american and twa within an hour of each other canceled their order for 13 concords
leaving two possible orders by iran which can afford anything three for china for a projected
peaking to new york service and only nine firm orders for air france and british airways
both extensions of their own governments a two and a half billion dollar misunderstanding of
the economics of commercial flying and france and britain both with new governments ponder
the chilling statistics that show that at 50 million dollars a copy the more planes they build
the more money they lose to show a profit they must raise the price and orders for
hundreds of planes must be renewed the story will continue after this
bernard daria is director of sales for aerospacial the french builders what went wrong why did they
all fall away like autumn leaves to a large extent i think this is due to the economic situation in
the airline industry after the subsonic jets were first put into operation the airlines made money
in the early 1960s and this is exactly when they took options on concord and the ussc
but after the introduction of the wide body jets in the late 60s early 70s then
they all lost money it is just a sad fact of life that they have over capacity
they don't see their way clear into the future as to where traffic will grow or will not grow
the uncertainty on fuel costs etc so i think they take an attitude of wait and see
but at toulouse and bristol you do not sense any doubts about concord
they are at various phases of production on 16 of the planes including five already flying clearly
the most tested airplane ever built perhaps over tested for if concord had come along five
years ago we'd be flying it today and there'd be plans for airplanes three times faster than sound
whatever the mistakes of economic calculation the big white bird as the french caller is a
sight to behold pilots say if a plane looks right it is right and concord certainly
qualifies almost a life of its own more an act of natural creation than space age technology
but as smoothly as she slips along 12 miles high above all the weather and all the wind her
survival depends not on performance but on sales even the state-owned british airways committed to
five concords has doubts about her future the chairman is david nicholson the problem with
concord which we have always recognized is that it is extremely difficult to forecast what the
operating economics are going to be we don't know even now where we're going to be allowed to land
where we're going to be allowed to fly over this is a totally new concept in uh aviation you're
flying supersonically with a skin temperature of 126 degrees centigrade we don't know what
the working life of the machine will be we don't know how much to allow definitely for
maintenance and downtime now with all these uh variable factors it is extremely difficult to
forecast what the operating results will be what are you saying junk concord rather than take the
financial risk of flying it no indeed i'm not saying that i believe we should go ahead and fly
concord and we in british airways want to do this now two years ago we were perfectly prepared to
take the development risk without concern and we reckon that even if things worked
out badly with concord we could still make a hundred million pounds profit per annum
that situation has been radically changed because of the worldwide fuel crisis therefore the
gamble which today we would uh be taking would be a much greater one from our point of view
concord or no concord are we not going to be flying supersonic sooner or later anyway
i believe so i believe sir the advantages are so great and from what i have heard the technology
has advanced to the point where a concord mark ii or even a concord mark iii is possible and
would have new uh performance possibilities which would radically change its attraction to airlines
if the worst happens to call court if they pull in the acetylene
torches and cut them all up for scrap tomorrow it will be a tragedy of sorts
every machine starting with the wheel is not so many nuts and bolts
it's the fruit of man's collective genius that urge that may result in a great symphony
or a great tapestry or even a great aeroplane to deny it is to deny one of the few positive
instincts our rather pitiful species can claim that curiosity that makes us seek out the unknown
and conquer it concord no concord it is clear we will be flying supersonically sooner or later last
week the russians let it be known that 200 tu-144s the so-called concord skis were in production