Japan and France to develop Concorde successor

Japan and France will jointly develop a new supersonic commercial aircraft to succeed the retired Concorde, Japan’s trade ministry has said.

Companies from the two countries will invest 100 million yen (€760,300) annually in research over the next three years to build a passenger plane capable of flying faster than the speed of sound, the ministry said in a statement.

The cooperation opens the possibility of reducing by almost half the flight time between New York and Tokyo to six hours on an aircraft with about three times the capacity of the Concorde with 300 seats, according to Japanese media reports today.

The ministry said the two sides will try to resolve the difficulties that had plagued Concorde, including jet-engine noise and high fuel consumption.

Japan has successfully tested an engine that can reach speeds of up to mach 5.5, or more than five times the speed of sound. It offers this technological know-how as well as its research in engines and energy-saving technology, the ministry said.

The French side brings experience from the Concorde, the world’s first and only supersonic commercial jet operated by Air France and British Airways, which flew at twice the speed of sound.

“This is truly significant industrial cooperation,” Japanese trade minister Shoichi Nakagawa said in the statement. “Bringing their respective advantages together … should lead to the ability to offer highly advanced aircraft and services in the future.”

Concorde first flew in 1969 and became a symbol of French and European industrial know-how. But the planes were retired from commercial service in October 2003, never having made back the billions of tax dollars invested in them.