A larger and faster Concorde on way?

Press, 1 February 1986, Page 16

A larger and faster Concorde on way?

NZPA-Reuter Paris France’s State-owned Aerospatiale, which built the Concorde supersonic airliner jointly with British Aerospace, is considering developing a larger second-generation model and would welcome international participation, an Aerospatiale spokesman said.

The new plane would be designed to carry between 200 and 300 passengers and have a range of 8000 km, compared with Concorde’s 100-passenger capacity and range of 6600 km, he said. Its cruising speed would be Mach 2.5, or close to 2700km/h compared with Concorde’s Mach 2 speed, and it would be designed specifically with the growing Pacific market in mind. Concorde has been restricted largely to Atlantic routes by both its range and the difficulty of gain-

ing overland routes. But Aerospatiale believes a larger, longerrange jet would be commercially viable linking North and South America with the Far East and Australasia. Concorde, which marked its tenth anniversary in commercial service recently, has been bought only by British Airways and Air France, although short-lived services were run in conjunction with Singapore Airlines and Braniff.

Although the plane is now running profitably across the Atlantic and on charter flights, it has never come close to recouping its SUS 3 billion ($5.79 billion) development cost.

British Airways and Air France say it will be at least 10 more years before Concorde, which is no longer in production, disappears from the skies.

The Aerospatiale spokesman emphasised that the new project was still at a very early stage of consideration, and that Aerospatiale has not yet approached .the" French Government to discuss possible financing.