Why must Japan be so far away?
Why isn't Concorde flying anymore?

@matrix
I can't answer the first question, but I can answer the second.

Concorde was never a good commercial plane. When it went supersonic, it obviously made a LOT of noise. Because of regulations, it was severely limited in it's speed when flying over populated areas. So most of the time it didn't fly even close to the speed of sound, like it was designed to. Which ultimately resulted in it being highly inefficient to fly. Which meant expensive tickets, which lead to low sales.

@alyx I know I know, I was just lamenting