Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by botskonet 2848 days ago
I saw one in real life for the first time this summer, at the Museum of Flight near Seattle. It looked beautiful of course, but the cabin was incredibly confined. Not like airlines are known for their cabin space, but I don't know if I'd take a faster trip in such a confined space over a cramped seat on a longer flight.
4 comments

I flew an Air France Concorde on the JFK-CDG route and it was definitely a tight fit... but completely worth it. Business class is nice, but nothing compared to chopping a few hours off time spent in dry, high altitude cabin air.

I've never felt as good stepping off an international flight as I did with Concorde. Still wish I kept the ticket though.

To put into perspective of how tight the Concorde is on space. The Dreamliner that sits in the same room as the Concorde has engines with a fan diameter that is virtually the same size as the diameter of the Concorde's fuselage (112 inches vs 113 inches)
It may be worth noting that, while the Concorde had smaller seats than the first class seats of that era, those first class seats were still nothing like modern lie-flat business.
The point of lie-flat seats is to let you doze off on long trips. The point of Concorde is that even trans-Atlantic trips weren't log enough for that to matter. You don't get lie-flat seats in first or business class on many US domestic flights either, for the same reasons.
That’s starting to change though. United is reconfiguring a lot of their aircraft for Polaris seating even domestically. The seats are more comfortable though I agree it doesn’t make as big a difference on even long daytime flights.
For the same ticket price, you could fly international business class... or better.