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American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

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Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#321

Post by 7952 »

tankenmate wrote: post #284
Rackedup wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sometimes I don't get English...

It's an artefact of where English gets the word "craft" from. In general in English the plural of uncountable things is the same as the singular. For example, the plural of sugar is sugar (sugars in English implies a group of different types of sugar). The word craft comes to English from Germanic (kraft). The meanings of these two words (English craft vs German kraft) diverged over time. In English the word has a me…

I wonder how the craft word was adapted to mean the boat object.

I think for river travel it was common to build a boat/raft to make a journey and then break it up at the destination. In that context maybe the object of the boat was secondary to the act of making the boat. And at some point boats became more personified and thought of as things in their own right.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#322

Post by upwardbound »

njarboe wrote: post #206
MetallicCloud wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not sure why this is getting downvoted. Point to point travel on Earth is one of the proposed uses for spacecraft.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#323

Post by kubb »

crazygringo wrote: post #318
mmaunder wrote: post #262

Burning more Jet-A to get less people around the world faster has got to be the most tone deaf idea this decade. I'm a pilot, I just attended Airventure, and I love the history around SR-71, Concorde and the other incredible high speed planes we've built. But this is an idea that had its time and aviation has moved on to high bypass turbofan engines, reliability, safety, fuel efficiency and reducing our environmental…

This isn't going to be applicable to 95+% of aviation, but for something like a flight between the US and Australia, e.g. LAX to SYD? Going from a 15h to 8h flight will be huge -- that's 30h to 15h round-trip. I'm American and visited Australia once, and realized I probably never would again, it's just too far. An Australian friend of mine here in the US only went home to see his family every few years. It just takes…

You don't need to go everywhere, really. Especially not halfway round the world for a vacation.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#324

Post by Symbiote »

yupper32 wrote: post #319
mmaunder wrote: post #262

Burning more Jet-A to get less people around the world faster has got to be the most tone deaf idea this decade. I'm a pilot, I just attended Airventure, and I love the history around SR-71, Concorde and the other incredible high speed planes we've built. But this is an idea that had its time and aviation has moved on to high bypass turbofan engines, reliability, safety, fuel efficiency and reducing our environmental…

> Getting rid leaded avgas Isn't that more chemical engineering? Boom sounds mostly mechanical. > moving away from fossil fuels altogether which includes fields like energy storage and electric propulsion Isn't this mostly battery tech? Seems like a stretch for these experts to be working on that. > developing an efficient trainer to replace the piston lead-gasoline burning C172 that is so ubiquitous and makes up muc…

GP is criticizing a company just doing something for the money without concern for the environment, which is a very reasonable criticism.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#325

Post by ghaff »

potatolicious wrote: post #294
neither_color wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Agree that this would be important except that there's basically ~no work being done on supersonic trans-Pacific flight. Boom's design doesn't have the range to operate trans-Pacific, and AFAIK there has never been any supersonic passenger aircraft (built or designed) that has had the range to pull it off. I do agree though, LHR-JFK holds very little fascination for me. It's a relatively short flight with a lot of gr…

Yeah. You can/could get JFK (or EWR) to LHR (or LCY) without a red eye. Not sure what routes exist these days though I've taken EWR to LHR in time for a late-ish dinner in the city quite a few times. It's a long day but even in Economy Plus seating, it's not much longer/less comfortable than flying coast to coast.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#326

Post by sofixa »

credit_guy wrote: post #291
mmaunder wrote: post #262

Burning more Jet-A to get less people around the world faster has got to be the most tone deaf idea this decade. I'm a pilot, I just attended Airventure, and I love the history around SR-71, Concorde and the other incredible high speed planes we've built. But this is an idea that had its time and aviation has moved on to high bypass turbofan engines, reliability, safety, fuel efficiency and reducing our environmental…

> to get less people around the world faster What does “less people” mean? You mean Boom is targeting only the ultra-rich? That’s not their aim. They aim to make supersonic flight both possible and affordable.

No, they're explicitly targeting the business segment, basically replacing today's business class on traditional airliners with a similarly sized, similarly priced, faster alternative.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#327

Post by zokier »

mmaunder wrote: post #281
mmaunder wrote: post #262

Burning more Jet-A to get less people around the world faster has got to be the most tone deaf idea this decade. I'm a pilot, I just attended Airventure, and I love the history around SR-71, Concorde and the other incredible high speed planes we've built. But this is an idea that had its time and aviation has moved on to high bypass turbofan engines, reliability, safety, fuel efficiency and reducing our environmental…

Just want to reply to my own post here to add that most people don't realize that the Cirrus SR22 is the world's best selling single engine piston aircraft and has been for the past 20 years. And it's wholly owned by the Chinese government. I'm aware this is a different market, but I want to illustrate how we're losing our lead in some critical areas, while we focus on creating solutions looking for a problem. Incide…

> I want to illustrate how we're losing our lead in some critical areas

How is single-engine piston aircraft a critical area?

edit: I do note that according to 2019 report, North American companies had >60% global marketshare in both turboprops and business jets in terms of units shipped

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#328

Post by ghaff »

alamortsubite wrote: post #86
N1H1L wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

United also has a deal with Boom, that was June this year. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57361193

That deal was June of last year (2021). They've been advertising the upcoming service in-flight since last summer.

There was also signage in O'Hare I think last time I passed through. Struck me as odd.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#329

Post by ucha »

nautilius wrote: post #312
ucha wrote: post #298

To everyone saying this will not work because it's more expensive... jets were more expensive than turboprops. And even though the former use more fuel, we prefer them. The costs of flying an airplane isn't proportional to its fuel usage. The faster an aircraft is, the more flights it can perform per day. The carbon emissions impact of flying a gas-guzzling supersonic aircraft aren't evident either. Of course, more g…

> The costs of flying an airplane isn't proportional to its fuel usage. The faster an aircraft is, the more flights it can perform per day. It is indeed not proportional, but not in the way you are thinking. Drag (and ~fuel consumption) scales with velocity squared, so a plane flying twice at fast (and neglecting any time at the airport, which would make the argument even worse) would use four times as much fuel. I.e…

That doesn't have much to do with the point I'm making. I'm saying if you double fuel usage, you don't double the cost of using the plane.

As cost of fuel is only a percentage of the price of the ticket, it's pretty obvious that there is a threshold as a percentage of total ticket cost under which spending 4x more in fuel to fly say 1.5x more passengers (because the airplane isn't flying 24/7) makes business sense.

That is obviously one of the reasons why they are starting with business class tickets because, fuel consists of a smaller percentage of ticket cost.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#330

Post by ucha »

foo92691 wrote: post #306
ucha wrote: post #298

To everyone saying this will not work because it's more expensive... jets were more expensive than turboprops. And even though the former use more fuel, we prefer them. The costs of flying an airplane isn't proportional to its fuel usage. The faster an aircraft is, the more flights it can perform per day. The carbon emissions impact of flying a gas-guzzling supersonic aircraft aren't evident either. Of course, more g…

The fuel burned by an aircraft is almost certainly the dominant portion of its lifecycle carbon emissions. I expect the carbon emissions due to its manufacture are negligible by comparison. Have you seen a source either way?

You're right.
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