The Concorde Saga

The 100 passengers, 9 crew members onboard the flight and 4 people on the ground were killed. Concorde was not the first aircraft to be involved in a crash. However, the Concorde crash had far more serious implications than the crashes of any other aircraft because the reason for the crash was directly traced to the design of the plane. Unlike most commercial jets, the Concorde's rear tires were located directly below the wing fuel tanks, and in close proximity to the engines. Two of the four tires under each wing of the aircraft were positioned just in front of the area where the engines sucked in air. Concorde also had a history of tire blowouts. It was noted that Concorde jets suffered a series of tire blowouts in early service life, including two in 1979, one in 1980 and one in 1981 at airports in the United States...

No doubt there were people willing to pay huge amounts to travel faster than the speed of sound but, these small numbers did not have the capacity to justify the costs incurred in maintaining the Concorde.

A project of Concorde's scale required more widespread acceptability and use to justify its operation. However, analysts felt that, although the Concorde would not operate in future, there could be a market for a project on a much smaller scale (like a 10-seater plane), providing supersonic travel to a select few customers who were willing to pay the price. There was also speculation that a successor to Concorde could be operational by around 2030...