Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

boomsupersonic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 531 posts

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#241

Post by neither_color »

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…

My personal hypothesis is that Asian and cross-Pacific traffic has grown considerably in the decades since Concorde was flying and I look forward to wealthy eastern markets keeping the supersonic market viable. If American and United don't figure it out I could see a gulf country carrier or Singapore Airlines making it work.

I haven't looked into profitability yet but a quick look at the list of busiest routes shows that Asia dominates the list. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_passenger_air_...

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#242

Post by jefftk »

robotnikman wrote: post #171
stuff4ben wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it was never a turbo prop. You'll never get a propeller driven aircraft to supersonic speeds.

And if you try you end up with monstrosities like the XF-84 Thunderscreech https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_XF-84H_Thunderscreech

"Unlike standard propellers that turn at subsonic speeds, the outer 24–30 inches (61–76 cm) of the blades on the XF-84H's propeller traveled faster than the speed of sound even at idle thrust, producing a continuous visible sonic boom that radiated laterally from the propellers for hundreds of yards. The shock wave was actually powerful enough to knock a man down; an unfortunate crew chief who was inside a nearby C-47 was severely incapacitated during a 30-minute ground run. Coupled with the already considerable noise from the subsonic aspect of the propeller and the T40's dual turbine sections, the aircraft was notorious for inducing severe nausea and headaches among ground crews. In one report, a Republic engineer suffered a seizure after close range exposure to the shock waves emanating from a powered-up XF-84H."

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#243

Post by bluGill »

zionic wrote: post #37
ISL wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rich people value time highly. Coach-class that gets you somewhere quickly can be worth a lot more than first-class that takes twice as long.

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 find planes impossible to sleep on. End up arriving over tired and stiff and sore after my 16 hour flight. I've never got my company to spring for a better class though. Next time I'm taking a 1 day layover in Germany or something.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#244

Post by metadat »

Rackedup wrote: post #240
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #225

IMHO a better title would have been: "American Airlines to buy 20 Overture aircraft from Boom Supersonic" When reading the original title, I had the impression that the company was going to be acquired by AA. Instead, it's "just" an order of 20 aircrafts. Note that this is not a new move by Boom, they played this card when raising money when they pitched at YC demo day, and they're doing it again. The problem I have…

> When reading the original title, I had the impression that the company was going to be acquired by AA. Same... at least they should put an S to aircraft... but then again maybe they hit the strict character limit...

The plural of aircraft is still "aircraft".

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#245

Post by qazxcvbnmlp »

gsnedders wrote: post #149
qazxcvbnmlp wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Move all the first pax to the boom aircraft and do all economy/premium economy in the 777 and you’d come out even in the number of seat miles available. You could also upgrade a couple of the 777-200 or 787 routes to a 777-300 to get more seat miles to offset those lost to loosing a slot to a smaller aircraft.

> Move all the first pax to the boom aircraft and do all economy/premium economy in the 777 and you’d come out even in the number of seat miles available. That's still two aircraft instead of one, which means acquiring another slot.

Oooohhhh. Yeah that wasn’t super clear.

American already has several slots into LHR. I counted 24 arrivals into LHR tomorrow.

One 777 all economy plus one Boom aircraft all business is roughly equal in seat miles to 2x 777 (first + business + premium economy + economy).

An upstart airline would need to acquire a slot to get a new aircraft into LHR. However American could add a super sonic aircraft to its service and still maintain the number of the seats it has going in. Yes, it would have to take one aircraft out, but there are enough pax that will be connecting and can be sold a different routing that it can use flexibility with seat configuration to not be limited by slots.

For American, a bigger factor is probably what kind of seats they can sell. For instance, DFW->LHR has a 75% load factor tomorrow for first class but a 68% load factor for economy class. However, later in the week economy has a higher load factor.

Those first class seats are a lot more profitable than an economy. Adding first class seats while taking away economy seats is profitable if you can fill the first seats.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#246

Post by ahh »

jseutter wrote: post #203
samstave wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What about the Tu-95? It's famously loud due to (says Wikipedia) supersonic propeller tips. Do you know why they're still effective?

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#247

Post by matwood »

zionic wrote: post #37
ISL wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rich people value time highly. Coach-class that gets you somewhere quickly can be worth a lot more than first-class that takes twice as long.

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.

On those lengths you start to go a little crazy. I've done Atlanta to Tokyo and back before, and those are 13+ hours depending. You sleep and wake up and sleep and wake up, watch movies, and then wonder why there's still so many hours left to go.

It does make me appreciate human engineering though. When you think about all the parts that work correctly day in and day out to have these longs flights run back and forth nearly non-stop.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#248

Post by 650REDHAIR »

_gu8l wrote: post #216
awb wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

A bunch of replies say that wouldn’t be allowed, but I heard sonic booms regularly while living near an Air Force Base in California. It didn’t seem to affect the hundreds of thousands of residents nearby. Is there an actual reason why we can’t have one every day at 10am or on some other regular schedule?

I imagine because it’s a lot harder to successfully sue the USAF.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#249

Post by panick21_ »

replygirl wrote: post #155
tgv wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biofuels is ecological fraud. It is not sustainable. And is there a synthetic fuel plant with zero impact at any scale already? No, this is just wasting more fuel for the heck of it.

> is there a synthetic fuel plant with zero impact at any scale already? No, this is just wasting more fuel for the heck of it cool, so you're on board with nuclear + hydro as a more sustainable base load solution than lithium-based batteries

I would love a future where we are making everything nuclear, including synthetic fuel. However this is nowhere near reality. You need high temperature reactor to make this viable.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#250

Post by galgot »

phire wrote: post #83
nikhizzle wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting that this is slower that the Concord which cruised at Mach 2. I wonder if a slightly lower speed makes the economics more sustainable.

Boom were previously targeted a cruising speed of Mach 2.2, I wonder why they lowered it to Mach 1.7 with the latest design update. Might be related selecting an engine. The previous version of the design had a fantasy engine that didn't exist (I think the specs came from a military engine that they couldn't use due to export restrictions), but now they are working with Rolls-Royce, and appear to have actually select…

Supersonic heat also. Concorde was in Aluminum and at 2.1 mach it was at the very limit of what could be done in aluminum. Which required a very "tight" design, engineering marvel in fact. Go faster and one have to go for titanium, which is much more difficult to work with and manufacture.
Post reply on HN