1) Aerospatiale ceased to exist and Airbus, its successor, announced it would no longer support the aircraft. Blame the Frogs on that one.
2) Ridership was declining, and 911 only exacerbated that decline.
3) Operating costs, especially fuel consumption per passenger, were skyrocketing.
4) Both British Airways and Air France made far more profit carrying first-class passengers on subsonic timings.
5) The combined controls suite was technically obsolete, using a unique analogue controls system and bespoke avionics. The cost to bring them into line with then current safety standards of avionics was deemed prohibitive as was the cost to uprate the controls to something in common with then-current controls inventories.
Even if Branson had been successful in his bids for the BA fleet, by now the fuel costs would be astronomical, Covid would have grounded them just as certainly and for a lot longer than 911, and the environutters would be going absolutely apoplectic over how much damage the rich were causing flying in that thing.
It's not clear how even subsonic commercial aviation is going to survive the current post-pandemic post-Paris Accords/Glasgow world.
Make no mistake, I loved seeing it and hearing it cracking out of Dulles. It was an icon of the times and I always dreamed of the ultimate trip of sailing to England on QE2 and flying back on Concorde. That dream, sadly, will always be just a dream.
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