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American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

boomsupersonic.com

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Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#201

Post by chx »

Justin_K wrote: post #162
chx wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a winning proposition. Even if we presume these will fly from a VIP terminal so the time you spend at an airport is low, you still need to get there. I just can't see everyone being flown in and out on a helicopter but maybe my imagination is stunted. Once you begin to add up those hours, you are just not saving enough time for the surely astronomical cost. You'd need a much longer range for this to be a…

You are arguing with a straw man. Nobody said driving to the airport will change. The claim is for the price of business class, get there in half the time.

What I am saying is that you can only save so much on the flight time over such a short range when the overall trip has fixed time segments. If we were looking at shaving off seven hours of a 20-21 hour London-Sydney trip then yeah, that's massive even if the flight itself is merely 19 hours of that.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#202

Post by extrapickles »

awb wrote: post #183
alphabetting wrote: post #3

Overture is being designed to carry 65 to 80 passengers at Mach 1.7 over water — or twice the speed of today’s fastest commercial aircraft — with a range of 4,250 nautical miles. Optimized for speed, safety and sustainability, Overture is also being designed to fly more than 600 routes around the world in as little as half the time. Flying from Miami to London in just under five hours and Los Angeles to Honolulu in t…

> over water All the imagined routes are over large bodies of water. Is it key to the functionality or intent of the aircraft in some way? Why not NYC to LAX in 3 hours?

It’s currently illegal to fly past Mach 1 over land barring a few exceptions (eg: military training areas).

https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/supersonic-flight

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#203

Post by jseutter »

samstave wrote: post #107
cjrp wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turbofan (what's on most commercial jet aircraft), not turboprop (jet engine driving a propeller, generally on smaller commercial and some private aircraft).

r/noStupidQuestions ; Can these be 'stacked' - Can you have a turboFan in line with a turboProp such that the output of the wash of the Fan feeds into the Prop, but with a portion of the wash spinning to thrust on the outer ring of output.=, via a design in the cowlings which is hyper directed thrust vents (think the grid of straws used to funnel water into a cohesive column, which can be directed) Imagine a small di…

As far as has ever been discovered - no, this won't work. You can think of a fan as just a prop enclosed in a housing (jet engine). A prop loses effectiveness at the speed of sound because the air passing the prop gets a high pressure shock wave that effectively makes the prop not prop-shaped, so it can't move air. Picture it as using a hammer on glass instead of pushing on glass with your hand, one works way better than the other for generating thrust. The only way (so far) to have an effective prop is to have the prop tips move slower than the speed of sound. Engine designers worked around this by slowing the air down around the prop. To do this, they moved it inside a tube. They slowed the air down so that the prop (fan) can travel more slowly, and then they heat the air behind the prop to gain excess pressure and thrust. And this is exactly what a mach 1+ jet engine does. The opening at the front of the engine forces air in, and the design of the inlet slows the air down so it is subsonic, along with a corresponding increase in pressure. Some fans (props) which are now effective because they spin at subsonic speeds compress it more, so more air can enter the engine. Then they burn fuel to heat up the air, increasing the pressure. After that they have a few more fans that run in reverse to drive the fans at the front of the engine, and finally exhaust this hotter, bigger, more high pressure air out the back of the engine to produce thrust.

So hopefully you see how your question is an interesting one, and one that has already been sorta done. Turbofans and turboprops are really quite similar, but at mach speeds only the turbofans have the right environment to be able to work efficiently. Your idea would have the prop in a supersonic air stream, which would make it effectively useless.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#204

Post by darrenf »

moffkalast wrote: post #17
JCM9 wrote: post #11

Strong FOMO settling in. Premium transatlantic routes routes like NYC-LHR are super important to the bottom line of the big legacy carriers. If one airline has supersonic and others don’t that could be a huge blow to the others. Of course things didn’t work out that way with Concorde, which was not commercially successful and more of a spectacle than something founded in business fundamentals. But if Boom can make su…

Concorde also didn't work out for management reasons and generated most revenue right before retirement when they they finally lowered ticket prices and stopped flying them half empty like the absolute idiots they were.

Do you have a source for this? Like other folk who have replied, this is the opposite to my understanding, at least from the perspective of BA (I know nothing about AF). heritageconcorde.com[0] talk about almost 20 straight years of profitability:

> Concorde earned £500 million for British Airways after tax profit, this was between a loss making 1982 and a highly profitable 2000 with just seven aircraft. The first profitable year was 1983 (£14 million) increasing to £54 million in 1987. BA had good and bad years, in 1992 they actually even made a small loss, but then quickly returned to profitability. Immediately before the crash the profit levels were running at nearly £60 million and could have returned had they kept flying. (Even the last 6 months of operation in 2003 netted £50 million profit).

And:

> With unprofitable routes mounting, Concorde was going through rough times in the early 1980s. At this point, British Airways made a move that potentially saved supersonic travel. In 1981, British Airways managing director Sir John King managed to purchase the Concorde fleet from the British Government outright for £16.5 million plus the first year’s profits. Following the purchase, British Airways increased fares, bringing Concorde routes closer to profitability. With the fleet now owned outright, British Airways added additional routes.

[0] https://www.heritageconcorde.com/concorde--british-airways

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#205

Post by robjan »

JCM9 wrote: post #11

Strong FOMO settling in. Premium transatlantic routes routes like NYC-LHR are super important to the bottom line of the big legacy carriers. If one airline has supersonic and others don’t that could be a huge blow to the others. Of course things didn’t work out that way with Concorde, which was not commercially successful and more of a spectacle than something founded in business fundamentals. But if Boom can make su…

A few years ago BA specifically excluded the idea of supersonic travel because you can provide a much more comfortable sleeper service at a similar price while making more profit.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#206

Post by njarboe »

MetallicCloud wrote: post #137
zionic wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also sanity. I’ve done a 16 hour flight before, and let me say never again . I slept for half of it and the other half was still miserable.

I live in Colorado, but am from Melbourne, Australia. I told everyone the last time I went back that it will be the last visit. That trip is hellish and once every 2 years is still too much.

Maybe Starship can turn that trip into under an hour in the future.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#207

Post by hadlock »

awb wrote: post #183
alphabetting wrote: post #3

Overture is being designed to carry 65 to 80 passengers at Mach 1.7 over water — or twice the speed of today’s fastest commercial aircraft — with a range of 4,250 nautical miles. Optimized for speed, safety and sustainability, Overture is also being designed to fly more than 600 routes around the world in as little as half the time. Flying from Miami to London in just under five hours and Los Angeles to Honolulu in t…

> over water All the imagined routes are over large bodies of water. Is it key to the functionality or intent of the aircraft in some way? Why not NYC to LAX in 3 hours?

When space shuttle Challenger broke up over Dallas, Texas about 20 years ago it came in really low (steep angle of attack) and there was a sonic boom, felt like a garbage truck had driven into the side of the house at full speed. Woke me up from sleep at about 6am. Got out of bed to see what was going on, turned on the TV to find out it was the space shuttle.

People will tolerate a sonic boom once a quarter or so, but you've better have a really good reason, like national security.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#208

Post by snovv_crash »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #135
chx wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a range of 4,250 nautical miles. > Need a part from GuangZhu CAN-LAX is 6,284 nm. > Ohio to Munich OK that can work, CLE-MUC is 3,759 nm.

> CAN-LAX is 6,284 nm. Just add a refueling stop at ANC, the same as most cargo flights today (and the same as most passenger flights in the past). According to a Great Circle mapper, CAN-ANC-LAX is only about 250 km longer than CAN-LAX.

Descending and climbing again will take a lot of fuel, jets are only efficient at high altitude. Plus of course the extra takeoff and landing adding cycles to the airframe.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#209

Post by theptip »

awb wrote: post #183
alphabetting wrote: post #3

Overture is being designed to carry 65 to 80 passengers at Mach 1.7 over water — or twice the speed of today’s fastest commercial aircraft — with a range of 4,250 nautical miles. Optimized for speed, safety and sustainability, Overture is also being designed to fly more than 600 routes around the world in as little as half the time. Flying from Miami to London in just under five hours and Los Angeles to Honolulu in t…

> over water All the imagined routes are over large bodies of water. Is it key to the functionality or intent of the aircraft in some way? Why not NYC to LAX in 3 hours?

Something I didn’t know about the sonic boom until discussions of this company is that it is continuous, not just at the point the plane passes the speed of sound. So a plane like this is constantly dragging a cone producing very loud noise behind it.
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