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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

#411

Post by hef19898 »

ominous_prime wrote: post #92
replygirl wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ah, neat! looks like they recently switched from 3x turboprop to 4x turbofan edit: had to correlate sources to find that a bunch of popular aviation blogs got the original design wrong. was actually 3x turbofan -> 4x turbofan

Not sure what you were thinking of, but they were never planning on a turboprop since that's not really possible.

Since we talk about a start up selling power points to VCs, why not use tirboprops? Same as having typos in Nigerian oil prince inheritence mails to weed out the targets, sorry investors, that might think too much?

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#412

Post by ghaff »

wmorein wrote: post #389
gbronner wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Concorde was not very pleasant to sit in from what I've heard. Great food, but the seats were basically economy 2x2.

This was something I always heard before I experienced it but the truth is it wasn't so bad. You definitely weren't sitting in a full First Class seat (which were smaller in any case back then) but it was still perfectly comfortable especially for the relatively short duration. And because the overall experience was so cool -- board directly from the lounge, the led display showing how fast you were going, seeing the…

The Concorde was more or less what domestic business/first class is today which is pretty much what first class was internationally as well back when the Concorde was flying. (Maybe a bit more cramped--more like what's being called Premium Economy on an airline like United these days.)

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#413

Post by hef19898 »

ksec wrote: post #99
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.

Makes me wonder if BOOM will ever enter the private jet market.

Maybe that will be their go-to market once they realize tgat airline business is actually incredibly hard.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#414

Post by standardUser »

jandrese wrote: post #368
galgot wrote: post #200

So they went from scaled down Concorde configuration : https://www.airway.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Boom_Ov... to a very scaled down Boeing 2707-300 configuration : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_2707 (that tiny fin tho...). While reducing cruise speed to 1.7 mach. I see no visible changes to deal with the sonic booms problem. So operation would be like Concorde I suppose, subsonic (or hi-subsonic) over…

And they still have not solved the problem that ultimately sunk the Concorde. Fuel costs made it unprofitable to operate whenever the price of oil went up. The small niche of customers willing to pay a significant premium in order to save some travel hours is not big enough to sustain an entire industry of specialized mechanics, parts suppliers, pilots, etc... Basically you need a critical mass of people riding these…

Sounds like a 1970's mindset that is wildly underestimating how much air travel has changed and how many more hundreds of millions of people can now afford semi-frequent air travel, with hundreds millions more in the pipeline.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#415

Post by S201 »

nradov wrote: post #382
S201 wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The pilot shortage (if there really is one) is almost entirely the fault of short-sighted airlines and their unions; it has little to do with GA manufacturers. If airlines really wanted a larger supply of ATP ratings then they could simply hire pilot candidates with little or no flight time, then pay them to go through training. Some large foreign airlines already recruit pilots this way.

I did not say the shortage was created by GA manufacturers, I said that GA in general is the start of the career progression for airline pilots in the US hence it serves a critical function for society. I too thought the pilot shortage was a myth until this past summer when it became abundantly clear there were not enough pilots in the world to deal with the resurgence of travel.

You could also argue that US pilots have superior training due to their GA experience as well. The over-reliance on automation and lack of stick and rudder skills is becoming a liability in those foreign airlines that train pilots exclusively in simulators and then throw them into the right seat of airliners where they're essentially computer operators instead of pilots.

The inability to for an airline pilot to land without autopilot is a very real thing: https://metro.co.uk/2019/05/16/russian-jet-crashed-captain-c...

Or the ability to fly in IMC conditions without an autopilot: https://www.flightglobal.com/safety/experienced-crew-struggl...

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#416

Post by [deleted] »

galgot wrote: post #396
Retric wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They seem to have dramatically reduced fuel consumption, but fuel wasn't the issue for the concord the limited number of viable routes where. Going from the Concrods 3550nm range to 4250nm should help with that as it opens up several new routes and longer routes see a more significant drop in travel times.

Still there are not much other routes you can go supersonic in one flight but trans-atlantic, which Concorde could do. Trans-Pacific which could have been the big money making route, like LAX to Tokyo, you need to be able to do 4737 nm... which makes the 4250 nm just short to make it. They would face the same problem the Boeing 2707 team had (or even Lockheed with the L-2000 project), no matter how they tried, too sh…

[deleted]

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#417

Post by username223 »

ghaff wrote: post #275
s1artibartfast wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fly business a few times a year and almost always treat it as rest and relaxation. The chance for quiet downtime that I won't get on the trip and rarely get at home as well. 10 hours of extra sleep, reading, and podcasts. It seems like most passengers do the same thing. Trying to smash actual work into the flight is miserable.

For me, it's a good chance to watch a movie and maybe read a book (which I don't do often enough at home). I'm may be an outlier but I don't really care if I have Internet on a flight or not. If I have a lie-flat business class option with decent food, getting to my destination a few hours early with less comfortable seating isn't a clear win. Like most people, I'm not jetting over to London to have lunch and sign a…

> Like most people, I'm not jetting over to London to have lunch and sign a deal and heading home to sleep in my own bed.

Thank you for enlightening me. As someone nowhere near rich enough for this to be relevant, my upper bound for pleasant W-E transatlantic flight is being able to sleep. Shortening that sleep seems like a loss. But if you have a private jet on call, you can skip connecting flights, airport security, schedules, and all the things that actually make flying slow and miserable. I guess this company is aiming at the people who don’t quite have that kind of money.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#418

Post by aidenn0 »

api_or_ipa wrote: post #252
robotnikman wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Even if your aircraft doesn't come close to the speed of sound, the tips of the propellers will, leading to insane amounts of noise. The Russians, as they are prone to do, didn't care and did it anyways. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-95

A max speed of 575 mph is quite impressive for a prop plane; hasn't ever been recognized by FAI though...

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#419

Post by sofixa »

newsclues wrote: post #130
sktrdie wrote: post #117

Do we really need to go somewhere so quickly? There needs to be a line somewhere where "getting to the other side of the planet in less than 12 hours is unsustainable and environmentally horrible". I've learned to appreciate slow-travel using trains and have been a supporter of electric planes for reaching further places.

Some people want to live and work in different places. Rather than high speed rail to get the masses into cities for work, we are getting fast planes for the wealthy to work in NYC and spend the weekend in European villas. Makes you scratch your head trying to justify this while climate change is encouraging people to eat bugs.

> Rather than high speed rail to get the masses into cities for work

That wouldn't really work outside of some very specific cases. High speed rail (300km/h+) needs some distance to get to its cruising speed. Below that it's a waste of money. The shortest high-speed rail route i know of is Paris-Reims and it takes 40 minutes, which is decent for a commute, depending on home/work to train station distance.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#420

Post by aidenn0 »

rkangel wrote: post #124
replygirl wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why the downvotes? the original design was trying to use 3x turboprops, and i can see articles on google about them switching to 4x turbofans after the xb-1 work edit: see parent edit, i was wrong. you guys are pretty good at making someone with misinfo feel bad though

I think the logical explanation is that there was a mistake in the original article. A propeller is not the right choice for supersonic flight, I don't want to say impossible but it wouldn't be far off. They've gone from 3 jet engines to 4, and in both cases they would be turbofans.

The XF-88B Turboprop hit Mach 0.9 in level flight, but it was using an afterburner, which is rather cheating. Supposedly it could go supersonic in dives.
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