My experience with Concorde:
Back in 1997 (1998?) BA Sales Reps were virtually begging the Company I was then working for to accept this deal:
- LHR to JFK in C-class (‘Cradle Seats’ at that time)
- Return on Concorde
I recall they mentioned they have no problem to fill in the morning SSC flight to JFK.
Filling in the second SSC flight is more of challenge, but they somehow managed.
But loads on JFK-LHR flights were disastrous. Nobody wanted to travel the whole day (taking time zone change into consideration), when they could take an evening flight, eat, sleep (I was able to sleep in Cradle Seats – then one could only dream that one day there would be fully flat seats in J), arrive in the morning. This is why they could offer us a very good deal for returns on Concorde. We finally rejected the deal.
Would it be different today?
For a start, we have extremely comfortable fully flat seats and even in my age I have no issue to sleep on the plane and then go home, take shower and WFH for some time.
BA run the following SSC schedule in 90’s:
10.30 am LHR departure – 9.20 am JFK arrival
7.30 pm LHR departure – 5.50 pm JFK arrival
9.30 am JFK departure – 6.30 pm LHR arrival
1.45 pm JFK departure – 10.25 pm LHR arrival
Boom will be slower so these flight times will be longer. I cannot imagine they would be given the 10.25 pm LHR arrival slot as the aircraft would probably be too noisy. Let’s say they could land at 9.50 pm latest, the flight would be 30 minutes longer what means departure from JFK would have to be at 12.40. They will have the same issue as BA – not too many people interested in taking these flights.
So how about an overnight flight. In theory it would work:
10 pm departure – 7.10 am arrival
But for a start – who would fly in a Coach-like seat on an overnight flight, when they could choose a slightly longer flight (3 extra hours more is not a major tragedy) in a comfortable, fully flat seat?
Maybe there is more chance this might work for Asia or deep Latinoamerica, but I just do not think this operation might be profitable for TATL services.