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Comment by gbronner | Hacker News Reader

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.

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There is no substitute for F2F for some types of work. Everyone I know hates flying, even if it is lie-flat. If someone can reduce the pain of flying to UK/Europe and Asia by knocking a few hours off then I would definitely prefer it.

Timezone differences alone make F2F worthwhile, even if you're fully remote. A week here and there face-to-face on the same clock is valuable.

how? jetlagged meetings aren't known for their mental clarity

I'm pretty sure a Europe-Australia line that doesn't take two days with 3 layovers would sell like hotcakes regardless of accommodations.

Qantas is already flying Perth-London direct (17 hours), and is seriously exploring options for pulling off Sydney-London direct.

The Boom Overture lacks the range for the Europe-Australia line. It would have to make two refueling stops to fly CDG to SYD. I think the primary initial market will be Transatlantic.

If they can find a way to add another ~400 nautical miles, you could do hawaii.

If their specifications are accurate, they will be able to fly California to Hawaii with an adequate fuel reserve. So there may be a market for a few supersonic aircraft in that market, but fewer than the Transatlantic routes.

If you haven't seen it -- Qantas are pushing ahead with "Project Sunrise" on A350-1000. So you'd get to MEL or SYD without a layover - but with something like a 20 hour flight.

https://www.qantasnewsroom.com.au/media-releases/qantas-anno...

I dont think supersonic will be a success. Remote has made business travel a lot less necessary and more predictable, so people are more likely to plan multi-hop business tours rather than flash transatlantic and transpacific flights. The failure of A380 is also telling: people are fine with flexible hops. But most of all people want to reduce their carbon footprint by minimizing travel distances, not travel times.

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.

Why would you assume this aircraft wouldn't have a luxurious cabin? It looks pretty nice from the one rendering they have on the site. 1-1 seating, so direct aisle access for all. Plenty of room.

Renders of any new aircraft always show them full of bars, gyms, bowling alleys etc, but the reality is just as many seats crammed in as they can fit, and then some.

They are targeting business class passengers, which makes sense. Supersonic is not going to make the profits off the Ryanair set.

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