[TylerE]

It was very successful (if not wildly profitable) for most of it's life. It was a great example of a halo project.

Then the Air France crash happened in 2000. That hurt. Then They were brought back into service a bit over a year later, on September 11th, 2001. Talk about bad timing.

Even after BA retired them Richard Branson wanted to buy (and operate) the entire fleet.

[valuearb]

It was never profitable on an accounting basis. Only if you ignore cost of construction.

[pmyteh]

There's a lovely LRB piece by Francis Spufford that covers (amongst other things) the accounting and procurement shenanigans required to avoid Concorde getting prematurely scrapped in the 80s, after it was clear it was a dead-end: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v24/n11/francis-spufford/lov... [paywall]