Most commercial aircraft receive upgrades as more are produced, usually efficiency gains which improve range, reduce costs or take out weight. There was a proposed Concorde upgrade that would have occurred had more orders been received.

This is the final article in Concorde week. Others in the series include a list of all Concorde’s in museums, the time Braniff operated Concorde in the USA, a couple of cool videos, and one about the best Concorde books and web sites.

The Concorde Upgrade That Never Was

The proposed Concorde upgrade was referred to as the Concorde ‘B’. This included reducing the aircraft’s noise, improving the operating range, reducing fuel consumption, plus aerodynamic improvements.


These would have seen leading edge droops added to the wings, permitting a lower angle of attack at low speeds and therefore less fuel consumption. The added benefit would have been an increase in the size of the fuel tanks.


Reheat – or Afterburner – would have been removed from an improved version of the Rolls-Royce Olympus powerplants. Along with additional acoustic lining, it would have markedly reduced Concorde’s noise.

What Happened?

The short answer is that nobody wanted Concorde, so there was no justification to continue to build the aircraft. Had airlines been placing orders, the improvements would have come into play from production aircraft number 17.


Even so, operational experience with the existing version allowed it to be deployed on sectors as long as London Heathrow to Barbados, which is 6,750 kilometres or 4,195 miles in length.

Overall Thoughts

You always see aircraft being upgraded. For example, the venerable Boeing 737 has seen the original -100 and -200 models, the upgraded -300, -400, -500, -600, then the next generation -700, -800, -900 followed by today’s MAX series. It’s a shame Concorde was so unsuccessful from a sales standpoint that upgrades were never put into place.

For the full story about the Concorde ‘B’ you can visit this page here. Did you know there was supposed to be a Concorde upgrade? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.

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