Last week's poll: Supersonic airliners

British Airways withdrew Concorde from service in 2003 but that hasn’t dampened engineers’ enthusiasm to revive the concept, notably at NASA where technologies are being investigated for a new supersonic airliner.

With increasingly advanced teleconferencing, The Engineer weekly poll asked if the supersonic airliner is a worthwhile concept. A resounding 49 per cent said yes, as there will always be a need for physical travel, so why shouldn’t faster aircraft help with this?

Just under a tenth (nine per cent) disagreed, siding with the view that advanced technologies for teleconferencing will increasingly reduce demand for physical travel.

Opinions then converged for 26 per cent of the vote, which divided equally between the view that the project won’t succeed without technologies to reduce the impact of supersonic flight on the atmosphere; nor without improving passenger comfort and reducing costs.

Another nine per cent said the project can’t succeed without reducing the noise of supersonic aircraft, and the remaining seven per cent didn’t agree with the options presented to them.