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Concorde future under review
LONDON, England -- British Airways could scrap its fleet of Concorde supersonic passenger jets because it is not making money, a press report said on Wednesday. Concorde has struggled to attract passengers for flights to New York following the Air France Concorde crash in Paris, which killed 113 people in July 2000, the Sun tabloid news paper said. British Airways, Europe's biggest airline, told CNN that the airline continually reviews its fleet but there are no immediate plans to halt Concorde flights. Concorde has a certificate to fly until 2009 and "will continue to do so as long as it is safe, reliable and commercially viable," a BA spokesperson said. But the airline said it was only flying half the service it used to following the Paris air crash. BA has spent £17 million on modifications after it was found that a burst tire had ruptured the fuel tank on the Air France Concorde. "We have only upgraded five of our seven Concordes and only operate one service across the Atlantic to New York, so technically we have halved our flights but that's only because we can't operate a robust service with only 5 planes," BA said. Passenger numbers have fallen on North Atlantic routes, where BA makes a big chunk of its profit, but the airline refused to break down the numbers flying on Concorde because that was commercially sensitive. The Concorde entered service in 1976 and Air France and British Airways have 12 of the planes still flying in total. A return flight from London to New York can cost as much as $10,000. But the supersonic jet has been plagued by technical problems: an Air France Concorde had to make an emergency landing earlier this month in Halifax, Nova Scotia, after one of the supersonic aircraft's engines malfunctioned. And part of the rudder on the tail of a British Airways Concorde fell off as the supersonic jet approached New York late last year.
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