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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

#451

Post by TheCoelacanth »

bluGill wrote: post #273
phire wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that sustainable synthetic fuels can't exist? Or don't current exist? Because those are two very different statements.

Both of those statements are false: synthetic fuels exist now. Last I checked you could buy synthetic fuel for about 2-3 times what regular fuel of the same types cost. Germany was doing synthetic fuels in WWII. South Africa did them when under embargo for their racist policies. Now they are mostly used by racers - where allowed they are enough better to make a win against regular fuel (assuming great drivers and wel…

The statement was sustainable synthetic fuels. Synthesizing from other fossil fuels like coal or natural gas definitely doesn't qualify.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#452

Post by dghughes »

delisam wrote: post #428
jandrese wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Didn't the founder say he envisions supersonic tickets to be $100? I can't even buy any subsonic tix for less than $120.

Here in south-eastern Canada it used to cost $800 to fly 180km to fly from my town to Halifax. Now I see it's only around $300 to $600.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#453

Post by rsynnott »

cortesoft wrote: post #214
tedivm wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone claiming you are wrong hasn't bothered to google. Literally the first response for "overture turboprop" is a series of articles confirming what you said. > The Overture supersonic aircraft will be powered by three turboprop engines, which includes two that will be mounted under each wing, while the third engine will be fitted at the end of the fuselage. https://www.aerospace-technology.com/projects/overture-…

There is no way you could go supersonic with a turboprop

Well, it'd be impressively noisy, anyway.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#454

Post by wbl »

krallja wrote: post #166
jfk13 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would they be allowed to go supersonic for LAX-JFK?

No, that route is over land.

Between PA and LA there are not a lot of populated areas so strearing around them should be possible.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#455

Post by atourgates »

neither_color wrote: post #241
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…

The leaked United / Apple data[1] from 2019 was an interesting data point for this demand.

At the time, Apple was booking 50 business-class seats a day just between San Francisco and Shanghai.

That's one company, on one route. Representing one segment of demand.

Certainly, things are likely to change with the effects of Covid, but I think there's a lot of substance to your perspective.

[1] https://9to5mac.com/2019/01/14/united-airlines-apple-biggest...

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#456

Post by bobthepanda »

hef19898 wrote: post #365
bobthepanda wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Workable != competitive, and in an industry as cutthroat in aviation airlines want the absolute best in fuel efficiency and reliability to undercut their competitors by $5. There are other commercial aircraft manufacturers but essentially in each size segment you will only see two players. Embraer doesn‘t make any direct competitors with Airbus or Boeing, as an example.

Embraer jets got rebranded as A220s not that long ago, great planes that took over the market that served by short 737s and A319/18s. No competition for the bigger planes, that is true.

The A220s were Bombardier.

Them selling out to Airbus had more to do with general issues at the parent conglomerate (they also exited trains and snowmobiles to raise cash). But they still make corporate jets.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#457

Post by dfadsadsf »

mshook wrote: post #237
cjrp wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems doable if the schedule was tweaked though? LHR 9:30AM - JFK 8:25AM, JFK 1:30PM - LHR 10:15PM

You're right but I'm sure both companies had good reasons for their schedules (for instance noise restrictions at night). And realistically, from your plane at JFK to Manhattan, that's got to be a least an hour and a half (immigration and cab/limo). And assuming you'd have to be at JFK just an hour before your flight (and for an international flight that's ballsy), plus with transportation still taking an hour, you j…

Just use Blade helicopter service - 10 min to Manhattan starting at $200+ so affordable to whoever can afford business class. Still tight for one day meeting but if LHR flight was at 8:00AM and flying back a bit later at 2PM NY time it's possible.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#458

Post by Fomite »

standardUser wrote: post #414
jandrese wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most of whom have demonstrated, time and time again, that price is the primary factor by which they decide who to fly with.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#459

Post by andruby »

acchow wrote: post #393
jandrese wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I wonder how much larger the population of people is today (vs Concorde's era) that are willing to pay for these supersonic ticket prices. 3x? 10x?

I’m not sure that it would even be larger now than before.

Subsonic flight has become much more efficient, cheaper and when paying for higher class, more comfortable. This is one of the reasons often mentioned for the economic demise of the concorde. The audience willing to pay $6000 on a concorde ticket, could now spend $4000 on first class subsonic with a seat that fully reclines into a bed. They can fly a little longer at night but sleep the whole journey.

Wendover did a good economic analysis of the concorde: https://youtu.be/n1QEj09Pe6k

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#460

Post by ChicagoBoy11 »

vimy wrote: post #228
ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #224

I'm surprised by this... I'd imagine that all of the BS we've added to airport procedures (under the guises of "security", mostly), would sort of help negate the typical "Concorde" case. In a universe where you still need to show up umpteen hours early for check-in, baggage, security, does having a plane that may cut a fraction of the time of the trip really seem compelling?

Seems more alluring as a private jet.

THAT would make tons of sense to me... here the flight is a greater share of the overall flight time, so cutting into that yields a greater percentage reduction on overall travel time, which is presumably the variable you'd want to most affect.
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