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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

#521

Post by tomaskafka »

petesergeant wrote: post #62
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…

> If one airline has supersonic and others don’t that could be a huge blow to the others I think it's going to come down to exactly how fast or slow this is, the price, and what the hard-product (eg the seats) are like. A modern First Class is a very, very comfortable way to travel, and other than the novelty value, I'd certainly rather spend 8 hours in lie-flat that 5 hours in a recliner. That'll also depend on the…

While I don't have the 1st class experience, I recently went overnight with a sleeping train, and was unlucky to find the slower 7 hour one already full, so I had to go with the faster one, which only let me sleep for 5 hours, leaving me a bit dazed at the train station at 5am.

Sometimes speed isn't better :).

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#522

Post by stew-j »

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…

There's a flip side to reconsidering aviation--the choices we make as consumers. Since leaving the aircraft manufacturing industry over 20 years ago, I have flown on 3 flights at approximately 5000 miles total, all 3 of which I wish I could have avoided. I'm not saying everyone could live this way, or that I'm particularly environmentally responsible in general, but it is possible. My life during those 20 years was rewarding and interesting, for the record.

The pandemic was terrible for the most part, but it did give us an opportunity to rethink how we live and work, including how to lessen future pandemics and enviromental degradation with our choices on transportation.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#523

Post by chasil »

solardev wrote: post #495
chasil wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The metallurgy of the fan blades has also vastly improved. Monocrystaline fan blades have very different material properties from the polycrystaline blades that (I am guessing) were used on Concorde. https://www.americanscientist.org/article/each-blade-a-singl...

Thanks for sharing that link! It's amazing what people were able to come up with in the 60s, before computers and Wikipedia and 3D modeling... wow. One of the patents mentioned is how VerSnyder was able to grow a turbine blade in a monodirectional crystalline structure: https://patents.google.com/patent/US3260505?oq=versnyder+196... just using a special mold and a specific alloy. That would later form the turbine bla…

I just reread it. All of it was familiar, but I had forgotten a few of the details.

The first monodirectional blades were introduced to commercial jet engines in 1974, so Concorde definitely did not have this technology with the original engines.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#524

Post by Bubble_Pop_22 »

qazxcvbnmlp wrote: post #476
Bubble_Pop_22 wrote: post #385

If TSA is abolished or scaled down significantly then this plane is dead on arrival. 7hrs London to NYC are more than acceptable, too bad it ends up being 10hrs

It already is if you fly business class. I’ve done drop off to gate <10 minutes at LAX & SEA multiple times.

Dude we get it, you ballin /s

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#525

Post by rjmunro »

onychomys wrote: post #4

> American has paid a non-refundable deposit on the initial 20 aircraft. Pretty glad I don't own American stock right now, because they're apparently led by madmen.

"Non-refundable deposit" could be $1. In exchange they get their name mentioned in a load of press as being associated with new technology etc., so massively worth it for them. Also worth it for Boom as having "orders" from credible airlines makes them look more credible.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#526

Post by njarboe »

jessaustin wrote: post #496
upwardbound wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I didn't downvote, but it seems unlikely that either of GP's endpoints will ever boast space ports.

Melbourne is on the coast so an offshore platform will work on that endpoint. New Mexico has a spaceport already. Baring one opening up near Denver, flying to the west coast and then taking a Starship would be possible.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#527

Post by jessaustin »

njarboe wrote: post #526
jessaustin wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't downvote, but it seems unlikely that either of GP's endpoints will ever boast space ports.

Melbourne is on the coast so an offshore platform will work on that endpoint. New Mexico has a spaceport already. Baring one opening up near Denver, flying to the west coast and then taking a Starship would be possible.

I'll take your word for it with respect to Melbourne, which is a lovely city I thoroughly enjoyed several decades ago. "Spaceport America" is a silly boondoggle that will never launch an orbital flight and will eventually be absorbed into White Sands missile range. Getting from anywhere in Colorado to any populated location not in Colorado takes longer than an hour. b^)

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#528

Post by awad »

bombcar wrote: post #27
gbronner wrote: post #6

Curious how the combination of remote work, videoconferencing, and the really luxurious business class / first class on sub-mach aircraft will compare to this. This is slower and smaller than concorde, so we'll see if the market really values speed over convenience / luxury. Boeing made the opposite decision 20 years ago when they cancelled the sonic cruiser.

So we can kind of rough it out - improving speed will make fuel costs go up (but how much?) but other fixed costs will go down (pilot time, airframe time, etc). However you may also be stuck where the people who will pay for the faster time are the types who will NOT sit in cattle class, so your airplane will have to mainly be first-class/business style seating.

As I understand it, Concorde was closer to coach in terms of seats and leg room than modern business (though with service that matched the price tag) so I can't imagine any issues here. If you could fly New York to London in less time than it takes to go from New York to California, while being served well, I can't see that being too much of an issue.

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#529

Post by krallja »

wbl wrote: post #454
krallja wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

14 CFR Part 91.817, in essence, prohibits anyone from operating a civil aircraft at a true flight Mach number greater than 1 over land in the United States and from a certain distance off shore where a boom could reach U.S. shores.

https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/supersonic-flight

Re: American Airlines agrees to purchase Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft

#530

Post by hinkley »

samstave wrote: post #94
alphabetting wrote: post #3

Overture is being designed to carry 65 to 80 passengers at Mach 1.7 over water — or twice the speed of today’s fastest commercial aircraft — with a range of 4,250 nautical miles. Optimized for speed, safety and sustainability, Overture is also being designed to fly more than 600 routes around the world in as little as half the time. Flying from Miami to London in just under five hours and Los Angeles to Honolulu in t…

> Probably will be very expensive but it's exciting for future possibilities Are you kidding me! I cant recall the last time I DIDN'T need to be in Honolulu in THREE HOURS!! This is a life changer for my Macadamia nut Addiction... --- In all seriousness, the best commercial prospect for this is high-speed-cargo. Need a part from GuangZhu like TODAY? Need an organ transplant from Ohio to Munich, TODAY? Need to fire 90…

Flying from Chicago to Tokyo or LAX to Hawaii is borderline traumatic. Getting those flights from 20 hours down to 8 would be a huge improvement.
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