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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

#461

Post by runarberg »

_ph_ wrote: post #400
acchow wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

This could be a very important enabler. As you can see in other "luxus" industries, the amount of affluent people on this planet has ballooned. I don't know any numbers, but I got the impression that the private airplane industry had a strong growth in recent years. And flying supersonic with an airline for sure is way cheaper than any private flight.

Will that also be the case if they actually have to pay for the carbon they emit in the process?

Currently airline passengers don’t have to pay for their carbon emissions, but I doubt that’s gonna last for much longer (we are in an emergency after all). And I’ve seen elsewhere in this thread that the emissions are likely gonna be somewhere between 5x and 10x of normal sub-sonic flights. The price of this extra carbon emission will probably be something that even affluent passengers will want to skip.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#462

Post by Fomite »

rootusrootus wrote: post #436
matwood wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> On those lengths you start to go a little crazy 100% this. After 16 hours, I could have kissed the ground when I walked off that plane. At some point, after maybe 8-10 hours, order seems to break down a bit. People stop caring so much about keeping clean, the plane starts to get really cluttered and nasty, food ground into the carpet. I feel for the cleaning crews that have to spruce up the interior after a really…

The Seattle to Dubai flight is rough, but at least it's usually on a nice plane.

The worst flight I've had in a long time was a British Airways flight to Nairobi. Not actually all that long a flight to Nairobi from London, but BA uses their "This plane is definitely about to be decommissioned" planes on that flight. The panel between the cabin and the fuselage came loose when I nudged it with my foot and slid down into the hold, so I spent the whole flight with essentially all my possessions wrapped around me, certain that anything I dropped would vanish into the void.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#463

Post by nradov »

S201 wrote: post #415
nradov wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

Those are separate issues. Even if airlines pay for pilot training, they could still have most of the syllabus done in actual airplanes rather than simulators. The FAA generally only allows up to 100 hours of simulator time to count towards ATP requirements. The major airlines are large enough that they could just buy their own trainer aircraft.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#464

Post by _ph_ »

runarberg wrote: post #461
_ph_ wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This could be a very important enabler. As you can see in other "luxus" industries, the amount of affluent people on this planet has ballooned. I don't know any numbers, but I got the impression that the private airplane industry had a strong growth in recent years. And flying supersonic with an airline for sure is way cheaper than any private flight.

Will that also be the case if they actually have to pay for the carbon they emit in the process? Currently airline passengers don’t have to pay for their carbon emissions, but I doubt that’s gonna last for much longer (we are in an emergency after all). And I’ve seen elsewhere in this thread that the emissions are likely gonna be somewhere between 5x and 10x of normal sub-sonic flights. The price of this extra carbon…

Good question. Currently fuel for international flights isn't taxed at all, as far as I know. Which explains the popularity of flying. Fuel for cars costs several times more, at least here in Europe.

Starting to tax airplane fuel would be an important step towards reducing the CO2 output. Possibly that would trigger a switch to synthetic and carbon neutral fuels.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#465

Post by rnk »

jayzalowitz wrote: post #72
zionic wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By 2026, with the typical delay till 2028 they’ll face the prospect of Earth-2-Earth starship flights

yeah, id put that in the 30s, thers a lot more risk there.

earth to earth starship flights are way away and will be vastly more expensive. Plus more risky. You are lifting that giant ship up into space.

It must be less efficient than a winged flyer - even a fast one like boom's, because it won't need so much energy to get out of the atmosphere like a starship has, right? I want starship to succeed but I'm guessing it will be so much more expensive and risky.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#466

Post by fedorareis »

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…

Seattle to Tokyo is only 4144nm so that might be a viable route especially for routes that would have already had a layover in LAX and/or Tokyo.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#467

Post by namirez »

I was speaking with one the top managers of Airbus and asked him about Boom Supersonic and the Overture. He was skeptical of the idea mostly because of fuel consumption. He said based on their research, the future of flight is slower not faster. Open fan, hydrogen, and electrical planes all point to a slower and more efficient aviation.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#468

Post by jandrese »

krallja wrote: post #170
chx wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a range of 4,250 nautical miles. > Need a part from GuangZhu CAN-LAX is 6,284 nm. > Ohio to Munich OK that can work, CLE-MUC is 3,759 nm.

CLE-MUC also has about 1/3 of the route over land, which you’d have to fly subsonic.

Maybe fly up Lake Erie and Ontario, then cut across New York, New Hampshire, and Vermont? You still end up over land for that last part, and you're going to rattle windows in Niagara, but it probably cuts half an hour off of the trip or so, maybe a little more.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#469

Post by notahacker »

Retric wrote: post #447
0000011111 wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can easily model this in a sheet. Like this one: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JhvGd6iVWNweMM-PYk3z... At todays Jet 1 A US fuel price of $3.07 per gallon it would cost $108k to fill the Concord. Which holds 120 passengers. That comes out to a cost of $900 per person passenger on a full fight. If the cost of fuel were double like a few months ago then that cost would be $1,800 per flight. Compared to a B…

Meanwhile a one way ticket cost US$975 in 1977 or inflation adjusted about 4,700$ today. Which increased faster than inflation so by mid 90’s your talking around 6,000$ which is something like 12,000$ today. Thus fuel while expensive wasn’t a deal killer over most of it’s history as long as they could keep most seats filled.

The "as long as they could keep most seats filled" was a deal killer though.

There was enough demand for one return flight a day carrying a small proportion of the overall passengers on the immensely-popular with wealthy people JFK-LHR and JFK-CDG routes. That wasn't enough to utilise the 14 production aircraft properly, never mind enough demand for it to have been viable as an airframe programme ...

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#470

Post by ghaff »

andruby wrote: post #459
acchow wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

The number of people who will pay--or can make their companies pay--$500+/hour for a handful of saved hours on a flight which mostly won't go into incremental productive work is miniscule. Most business travelers aren't international lawyers or consultants flying across the Atlantic for a quick get together. But pay a bit more to fly a bit more comfortably to be more rested/as a perk and maybe even save on a hotel room night? Quite a few people, even if not the typical traveler.
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