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Comment by bobthepanda | Hacker News Reader

The designs did burn a lot of fuel, but sonic booms were also extremely unpopular.

The FAA picked Oklahoma City (without asking them first) for an experiment to subject a city to regular sonic booms. It, uh, didn’t go well. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_sonic_boom_tes...

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If curious what a sonic boom sounds like. I found this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_KbZON5sW0

The normal caveat about how microphones are really unable to capture sounds of this magnitude probably apply here.

For example, I once went to vandenburg to see a rocket launch and that was the biggest sound I have ever heard, not the loudest, we were five miles away, but the way the sound shook you impressed the hell out of me.

Right, but what I meant was that it'd be difficult to have a sustainable supersonic flight business given the fuel consumption required at those sppeds. My understanding is that even though Air France and British Airways were charging twice the price of normal first class for Concord, they were losing money on them.

I'm surprised there aren't supersonic business jet though.

> My understanding is that even though Air France and British Airways were charging twice the price of normal first class for Concord, they were losing money on them.

They weren't, the Concordes were quite profitable until 9/11 and the following slump in international travel ( due to fear, increased controls and inconveniences) and increase in oil prices.

> I'm surprised there aren't supersonic business jet though

There are companies trying to build supersonic business jets, like Boom.

It was a novelty. The market was small the expectation that it costly but still profitable is easy.

But I wouldn't care for sonic travel besides the novelty.

Price wins

Admittedly for a unique minority Concorde wasn't a novelty at all: the very few journalists who covered Washington and London global political developments (and who were indulged the budget) used Concorde more often than any red eye shuttle. I actually associate the atrocious decline in public US - UK understanding to this absurdity. The absurdity being how much we needed a humanist perspective on transatlantic relations after 9/11 but got informationally waterboarded instead by sheer volume of grade school quality wire release. The cost of running Speed Bird even a little longer for diplomatic corps reporting should have been a mutual national priority.

Also, that happened to be right around the end of their lifespans anyways, and no one wanted to invest in a second generation plane.

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