Well, if you look closer into that history of concerns, you may find out that the peaks surprisingly happened as one part of the world tried to sell their supersonic plane, while another part was stuck at subsonic tech. Especially the vital US landing rights came in late, being held back by .. I don't know.

A quote from that time.

Quote:

Much of the official opposition to giving BA and AF landings rights was based on pure jealousy of their commercial lead rather than environmental concerns.

As history goes, it gets written by the winners, but, in their hubris, they sometimes speak out things clearly after everything is going in the planned way.
Who was the speaker? Lloyd Goodmanson, Boeing Design Director, in The Times.

As it later turned out, Concorde wasn't the loudest thing flying, but the 707 for example was. So they even showed, scientifically = not promotion based, that concerns in that aspect had no basis. However, they've influenced the business with Concorde significantly, while the 'quieter' but slower tech could grew.
Coincidence? Well, maybe.

With the current traffic density of 2011 in mind, I think that some of the concerned people would be better off if ticket prices had remained high and the industry therefore small. Mother Earth would be more happy too. That's naive, but also very true I think. But it's not the direction in which money business is turning the world.


Quote:

I can see that the 787 was made to be 20% more efficient so that airlines will spend less money on fuel.

20%, compared to what? And, another one. Real value or advertising one?



Quote:

However, it is also true that people have become more aware of what we're doing to the environment--I didn't say who, and I certainly did not say large companies, but some people are.

Yeah.  ;D Name those three, I know the other approx 7 billion ones already.
Seriously, and without wanting to sound too rude. The 'awareness' in this thread alone showed that intelligent people like you and me don't seem to realize how e. g. the aviation business grew. Remember the x2.3 in just 20 years? In 2010 2.3 billion 'aware' people flew around the world. And that helps the planet or do we just use that 'aware' thingy to calm something?

Sorry, but we're still not flying mainly vital goods or doctors to their patients, but tons of holiday people. While I wouldn't blame nice folks of doing bad things, I can at least point out that some of them may be very happy about not knowing. I hope not by design.  ::)

As said, 'being aware' doesn't help anyone, 'acting aware' does and we (yes, me too) fail miserably on the last part, while some of us pretend that everything is fine. That's the tenor here.


Mark, the Concorde ban time was a short period and had a character that would take a while to explain, but is lot of fun and use to discover. It shows a vital aspect of global business, where countries compete in the first place, not products.
That still is a character trait of modern business, it has even gained strength and official 'concerns' only aim at calming the readers. The US tanker deal was one of the last peaks of 'global friendship' for example.

Concorde flew to Australia and over it. It remained subsonic over populated landmass, but went fast over water and sparsely populated one. There was no constant ban, same goes for other countries. It visited Oz until the last years of service.