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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

#351

Post by _hl_ »

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

I was shocked to hear that leaded gasoline is still around, so I did a quick search. Turns out most (all?) piston-engine driven airplanes still run on leaded gas. Jet airliners don't, so I'm not sure if the overall impact is significant, but nonetheless shocking to hear that we're still spraying lead into the air we breathe.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#352

Post by rawling »

7952 wrote: post #321
tankenmate wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A couple other suggestions, although still not certain:

> Use for "small boat" is first recorded 1670s, probably from a phrase similar to "vessels of small craft" and referring either to the trade they did or the seamanship they required, or perhaps it preserves the word in its original sense of "power."

https://www.etymonline.com/word/craft?ref=etymonline_crossre...

I'd never even though about this, so thanks for that.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#353

Post by Ancalagon »

_hl_ wrote: post #351
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 I was shocked to hear that leaded gasoline is still around, so I did a quick search. Turns out most (all?) piston-engine driven airplanes still run on leaded gas. Jet airliners don't, so I'm not sure if the overall impact is significant, but nonetheless shocking to hear that we're still spraying lead into the air we breathe.

Some of the new piston planes I believe are rated to use unleaded but the problem has been legislation and the FAA regarding getting unleaded approved to make it legal and ubiquitous

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#354

Post by tankenmate »

7952 wrote: post #321
tankenmate wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I suspect it was a shortening of watercraft. According to wiktionary the use of the word for water vessels was originally used for smaller loading craft. So using the older Germanic meaning of "by means of", the phrase "it got here by watercraft" could be translated as "it got here by means of water". One could assume that it wouldn't take much for the word to go from preposition to noun; especially in the context of agglutinates and abbreviations.

The English word "boat" comes directly from German; "das Boot".

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#355

Post by S201 »

zokier wrote: post #327
mmaunder wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> How is single-engine piston aircraft a critical area?

Where do you think airline pilots come from? New pilots learn to fly in single-engine piston planes. And then again as flight instructors and commercial (non-ATP) pilots while building time to get their ATP rating and move onto the airlines. The continual slow death of GA is only going to worse an increasingly dire pilot shortage.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#356

Post by chinathrow »

mpweiher wrote: post #297
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…

In the GA segment, the Pipistrel Panthera is really interesting. With the currently available conventional engine, it vastly outperforms the Cessnas and Cirruses, AFAICT. So with the hybrid and pure electric options in development (these were planned from the start, so the plane is designed for them), it is still competitive. https://www.pipistrel-aircraft.com/products/general-aviation... (Not affiliated or associate…

Pipistrel is now owned (as is Cessna) by Textron.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#357

Post by nautilius »

ucha wrote: post #346
nautilius wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, there is an epsilon on top of fuel. But maybe you missed the obvious fact that all aircraft are getting slower rather than faster over the last decades, so that threshold is in the opposite direction of what you're proposing. And there is zero logic behind your second obviousm, as your premise is already wrong. The reason they start with business class is because you can charge more per seat. Seems pretty obvio…

Fuel cost, depending on routes, number of business seats, seat occupancy is at about 25% of total costs [0]. 75% is what you call epsilon? Aircraft speed as barely budged since we transitioned from turboprop to jets. That's something you could call epsilon. You're right that they start with business seats because they cost more. Business class seats cost 3-4x time economy while occupying less than 2x the space so the…

> 2x the space so the cost of fuel as a percentage of the ticket price is lower. It might not be obvious to you but I'm happy to explain it :)

See, your claim is that fuel cost is the sole reason they do this. I'd argue it's obvious they'd do that even if all fuel was free.

> Aircraft speed as barely budged since we transitioned from turboprop to jets.

Ah, it's again one of those nonlinearities you seem to have trouble with. See, the cost increase is, again, not proportional to speed. On top of the quadratic scaling, you have a very nonlinear and steep (not-proportional!) increase in drag coefficient. So, when you look up that what I say is true, but you want to weasel your way out by saying 'it's not by much', you're missing that the impact on drag (and fuel) is substantial.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#358

Post by jandrese »

Ancalagon wrote: post #353
_hl_ wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Getting rid leaded avgas I was shocked to hear that leaded gasoline is still around, so I did a quick search. Turns out most (all?) piston-engine driven airplanes still run on leaded gas. Jet airliners don't, so I'm not sure if the overall impact is significant, but nonetheless shocking to hear that we're still spraying lead into the air we breathe.

Some of the new piston planes I believe are rated to use unleaded but the problem has been legislation and the FAA regarding getting unleaded approved to make it legal and ubiquitous

The FAA has been dragging their feet on this issue for over 20 years now. At first the excuse was that there wasn't a viable alternative, but now there is and they are still slow rolling it. The administration has a almost pathological fear of change.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#359

Post by S201 »

_hl_ wrote: post #351
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 I was shocked to hear that leaded gasoline is still around, so I did a quick search. Turns out most (all?) piston-engine driven airplanes still run on leaded gas. Jet airliners don't, so I'm not sure if the overall impact is significant, but nonetheless shocking to hear that we're still spraying lead into the air we breathe.

Yes, 100LL still has lead in it. And despite what it may seem based on skewed figures from those who want to see local airports closed so they can build more strip malls and condos, there has been a 99.99% reduction of lead pollution from gasoline overall since the phase out of automotive leaded gas. We're working on getting unleaded avgas, you can blame the FAA for it taking so darn long, but it's hardly an environmental emergency.

> Turns out most (all?) piston-engine driven airplanes still run on leaded gas

Not technically all. There is unleaded avgas although it's not yet common and some piston planes are diesel.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#360

Post by nradov »

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…

The Boom Overture lacks the range to fly non-stop LAX to SYD. It would have to make at least two refueling stops (something like LAX-HNL-NAN-SYD), so it wouldn't save any time. The crew would also need to be changed at least once due to working time limits, and it's too small to accommodate crew rest facilities.

This airliner is primarily targeted at shorter Atlantic routes; if they succeed in that market then they might build a larger successor model with the range for Pacific routes.

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