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ceejayoz

> having the availability for the select few that need it is still a good thing

In the days of Zoom and soon stuff like Starlink, what population groups is this the case for?

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Not every meeting can or should be done via Zoom

How many of those need supersonic flight to attend?

Probably a greater percentage than of all meetings.

The kind of stuff you need to be in person for tends to be the stuff that doesn't give you the advance timing to plan travel.

That isn't my experience at all. International events, press tours, a series of customer meetings, etc. are the sort of thing that most benefits from in-person attendance and they're scheduled well in advance.

You're thinking way too positive. Lots of lawyers/technicians/consultants/reps have to be places on short notice for bad reasons.

That's mathematically vacuous. Any number except 0 is a greater percentage of any enumerable proper subset than of the entire set.

The corollary to #1 upthread is that, unless you can bring pricing roughly in line with very comfortable international first/business class, the number of people who will want/need to spend many thousands of dollars to save 12 hours is almost certainly not a lot.

Australia is pretty far from the rest of the world.

Singapore is 8h nonstop from Sydney. Tokyo is 9h. Los Angeles is 13h. Qantas was considering launching a 20h nonstop to London before COVID.

It‘s a much better value prop than halving transatlantic travel time, which is 6h, the smaller side of a reasonable sleep.

But the time in-flight isn't wasted anymore. Planes have wi-fi now, you can be doing other work or even attending other virtual meetings during the flight. Being on a plane for 13 hours doesn't mean 13 hours of thumb-twiddling anymore.

How is it? My understanding is that it's pretty pricey, I can't imagine it'd be very fast (certainly wouldn't be if everyone is using it).

I work at a place that doesn't pay for anything beyond basic economy for business travel, which isn't that uncommon of a cost-cutting measure. I'm definitely not going to be able to expense expensive in flight wifi. To say nothing of work productivity on a cramped tin tube.

If you're working in a place that only pays for basic economy, then you are certainly not a candidate for a supersonic flight at a typical ticket price of $16,000 transatlantic, no matter how important the meeting you need to get to is, just to avoid spending $100 on in-flight wifi.

The early days of jet travel were also very expensive. We didn't get to Ryanair-style low fares overnight, but through successive iterations.

At least one of the startups working on it has promised comparable or lower per-seat mile cost, and has orders on book: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/36952/boom-rolls-out-i...

Meeting is just exchange of bytes. Exchange of bytes that requires movement of atoms thousands of miles is completely ineffecent and legacy tech.

Consider a meeting in which you are attempting to read the body language of an adversary. Video chat may not be sufficient. For a concrete example, consider poker. Note that I am taking a fairly broad definition of "meeting" here.

Australia has pretty bad national internet speeds.

There are also certain things done better in person, like vacations, visiting family, etc. And some types of business like sales also work better in person.

> Australia has pretty bad national internet speeds.

Which is why I mentioned Starlink.

> There are also certain things done better in person, like vacations, visiting family, etc.

I have family in Australia, and visit them without supersonic flight.

People visited Australia before commercial transoceanic flight too, I don't see why improvements have to stop now.

There's diminishing returns.

Going from weeks to a day - not to mention cheaper - makes a whole lot of sense. Going from a day to half a day at a higher price and likely a less cushy aircraft does not.

Transoceanic flight wasn't cheaper when it was first introduced[0], it took economies of scale to bring the price down.

Additionally, the fact that Australia is a day away and Europe is half a day away is a major factor in why I have visited Europe a number of times and never been to Aus/NZ. I am almost certainly not the only person like this.

[0] https://airwaysmag.com/today-in-aviation/the-first-trans-atl... $375 flight vs $159 first class by boat https://www.cruiselinehistory.com/1930s-sailing-to-france-fr...

Before the jet age NY-London was 19h. It is significantly better as a 6h flight, to the point where the route is so busy BA alone makes $1B of revenue.

Again, diminishing returns.

With things like airport security, weather delays, ground stops, etc., is going down to 3h worth several times the cost?

The Concorde found the answer is largely "not really".

Sure, but in the context of Australia, we are talking halving 9, 12+ hour flight times, which is a much larger improvement than the measly transatlantic flight.

I go to Australia a lot, would sure prefer supersonic if its faster

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