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Comment by chx | Hacker News Reader

This is not a winning proposition. Even if we presume these will fly from a VIP terminal so the time you spend at an airport is low, you still need to get there. I just can't see everyone being flown in and out on a helicopter but maybe my imagination is stunted. Once you begin to add up those hours, you are just not saving enough time for the surely astronomical cost.

You'd need a much longer range for this to be a real win. If you double that range then you can do JFK-SIN or PTY-SYD and then you could do an LHR-PTY-SYD flight in ~12 hours which would be a massive win.

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Boom Supersonic is targeting current business class seat costs per mile. So it‘s not Concorde level crazy.

You can target any price you want, if you achieve it is a different story. All eVTOL companies arw targeting prices below taxi rates and have yet to proof thatvthey can actually do it.

> This is not a winning proposition. Even if we presume these will fly from a VIP terminal so the time you spend at an airport is low, you still need to get there. I just can't see everyone being flown in and out on a helicopter but maybe my imagination is stunted. Once you begin to add up those hours, you are just not saving enough time for the surely astronomical cost.

This is true for getting to JFK from Manhattan, which is 40 minutes with 0 traffic and then the airport is absolutely massive and has long lines, but Boston -> Logan or SF to SFO is minutes. I think my total time from my door to my gate is ~30-40 minutes when I fly SFO.

Shaving off enough hours to be able to board a plane in the early morning, have a two hour business meeting in the destination and fly back and arrive home in the late evening of the same day is a huge draw to some.

Except it doesn't really work. It could almost work flying west then east to get home but regular Concorde flights couldn't give you the option to fly back the same day.

BA001 LHR 10:30AM -> JFK 09:25AM

BA002 JFK 08:30AM -> LHR 05:15PM

AF002 CDG 10:30AM -> JFK 08:15AM

AF001 JFK 08:00AM -> CDG 05:45PM

That's why flying westbound supersonic is less of an advantage. Because as you can see, flying west, your day is still wasted, even if you leave early.

Seems doable if the schedule was tweaked though? LHR 9:30AM - JFK 8:25AM, JFK 1:30PM - LHR 10:15PM

You're right but I'm sure both companies had good reasons for their schedules (for instance noise restrictions at night).

And realistically, from your plane at JFK to Manhattan, that's got to be a least an hour and a half (immigration and cab/limo). And assuming you'd have to be at JFK just an hour before your flight (and for an international flight that's ballsy), plus with transportation still taking an hour, you just wasted 3.5 hours commuting forth and back to the airport.

That schedule wouldn't work unless you flew to Manhattan. And even then, it'd be tight.

I expect operators would arrange dedicated/express facilities for all the airport stuff to speed up the experience. Dedicated/priority check-in, security, immigration. What would be the icing on the cake is an express train from the airport to the city centre that runs every 10-20 minutes (for all passengers prepared to pay, not just supersonics).

That train is the Heathrow Express, just need the JFK equivalent and you’re sorted!

That would be the Long Island Rail Road (at 35 minutes). (It's also connected by subway, which will take 60 minutes to Manhattan but maybe worthwhile if you want to get off sooner.)

Just use Blade helicopter service - 10 min to Manhattan starting at $200+ so affordable to whoever can afford business class. Still tight for one day meeting but if LHR flight was at 8:00AM and flying back a bit later at 2PM NY time it's possible.

First class into JFK on Pan Am used to at least have an option to fly into NYC by helicopter. Originally this was to the Pan Am building in midtown was switched to the midtown heliport after an accident.

a "reasonably" priced helicopter service already exists in nyc, I don't see why this would be so crazy.

You are arguing with a straw man. Nobody said driving to the airport will change. The claim is for the price of business class, get there in half the time.

What I am saying is that you can only save so much on the flight time over such a short range when the overall trip has fixed time segments. If we were looking at shaving off seven hours of a 20-21 hour London-Sydney trip then yeah, that's massive even if the flight itself is merely 19 hours of that.

In other words, running into Amdahl's Law [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law

I think Boom's entire business plan is that they can do supersonic passenger jets for not astronomical cost. It's not like they're unaware of the Concorde.

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