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Peter Kämpf
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The Concorde mainly transported fuel across the Atlantic so that enough was available to land safely. Passengers were just an extra on top. Also, being fist-class only, it held fewer passengers than what low budget airlines have taken to cramming into their planes lately.

To look at the structure relative to passengers is a bit misleading. Let's look at the fuel load and the mass fraction of empty weight relative to MTOW instead:

747-100: 333.4 tons MTOW, 162.5 tons empty, 183,380 liters tank capacity. That is 1.1285 liters per kg of empty mass. The mass fraction of empty relative to MTOW is 48.74%.

Concorde: 186.88 tons MTOW, 78.9 tons empty, 119,800 liters tank capacity. That is 1.5146 liters per kg of empty mass. The mass fraction of empty relative to MTOW is 42.22%.

If you compare passengers plus fuel to the empty mass of each airplane, the Concorde actually comes out well ahead of the 747 and looks like a miracle of lightweight design. Having structurally efficient delta wings helped and should explain most of the difference.

Peter Kämpf
  • 237.3k
  • 17
  • 601
  • 944