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Comment by lumost | Hacker News Reader

Boom's premise is that they can reduce the sonic booms to acceptable levels while making incremental progress on fuel and maintenance costs.

Airlines are likely expecting that business trips flying coach are going to radically diminish. Offering a super-premium fast flight for the remaining business travelers who must travel but have a reduced tolerance for it is a smart move.

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But isn’t Boom selling a vision for affordable supersonic flights?

What you’re suggesting about “super-premium” flights doesn’t map to what’s being publicly said about Boom or the fundamental principles of commercial flying. As a matter of fact, the Concorde ultimately failed for those very same niche-economy reasons.

What’s your source for saying that business trips flying coach will diminish?

> What’s your source for saying that business tripes flying coach will diminish?

That's an unsourced opinion based on personal experience. Zoom has become a much more common method of connecting with remote teams. I don't see a compelling reason to travel for non-critical business functions, and if the travel is that business critical then I can probably get my company to pay the expense of a premium ticket.

There are probably 2 travel occasions per year where the business travel is more of a "fun" activity such as conferences etc. I'll still fly coach for those.

In my experience zoom meetings work a lot better if you meet the people in person once in a while. Human nature is someone you know in person is more trusted than an image on a screen.

So instead of flying trans atlantic every 2 months it's once a year. That's an 80% drop in demand.

Or suddenly you realize you can be effective working over Zoom instead of in person as long as you have those couple meetings a year, so you have new business or employee relationships that only existed locally in NY or London before. That’s an X000% increase in demand.

Agreed, I thought Boom was positioning itself as “the cost of a business class ticket”, not “the cost of a Concorde ticket”.

First of all, don't be surprised if a goal of “the cost of a business class ticket” translates into something like 50% or 100% more.

Also the Concorde was not that much of a premium over first class on, say, a 747. I'm remembering +30% or +50%. Of course, that first class ticket was very expensive if you inflate it to today's money.

JFK-LHR-JFK business class is about $9k assuming you're travelling fairly flexibly without a Saturday night away, at least pre-covid.

Even a month away I can't see a direct flight for less than $8k return leaving JFK evening of Jul 11th and returning July 16th.

The flights are pretty much empty at the moment, but they would be at any price. Doesn't mean that VS/DL will sell for $7k (undercutting BA/AA's $8k), it's effectively a cartel.

Affordable is relative. International business class from NYC to London is probably going to run you $3-4K RT for a business class seat which is absolutely routine for senior business people. Assuming you consider that affordable--which it certainly is compared to a private plane--a 50% premium over that would still seem to be in the affordable category. Doesn't mean it's cheap of course.

The Concorde was a premium over sub-sonic first class but it wasn't anything like double.

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