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Comment by rishav_sharan | Hacker News Reader

But Supersonic is indeed AN answer. Delhi-Dubai takes 4 hrs. and if Dubai to NY could be done in 4 hours, I would very much prefer to buy that ticket - even if the fare prices are twice that of normal business class. Dubai-NY is a crowded route and there are plenty of very rich professionals who can take it on a regular basis.

And even for personal flights - considering that I have to travel only once a year between India and the US, I would very much welcome this option.

The current 24 hour long journey is just too brutal, and often time constraints mean that I can't break the journey into small hops over 3-4 days. And I shudder taking my family with me on such trips, given how much of a stress it causes.

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DXB-JFK is over land almost 50% of the route, it will never make sense for Boom or anyone - you can fly subsonic to London and transfer to supersonic to shave a few hours off though - though shave off 45-60 minutes for transit buffer.

If they actually can get 4,250nm of usable range, you might be able to do something in Japan to SEA or maybe SFO, and that routing would make more sense probably.

But this is really really unlikely to ever fly - the physics and economics are so stacked against this until something really tectonic happens with how we store and use energy... but like not fossil fuels. It would need to be something that borders on "free", like if fusion existed, and was safe, easy and light.

Today's state of the art is what? a 2-hour flight from Delhi to Mumbai, then a 16-hour nonstop from Mumbai to Newark? 18 hours in the air. Versus a hypothetical 4 hour Delha-Dubai then 5 hour Dubai-NY for 9 hours total in the air.

So $1,100 for today vs $7,000 for supersonic (using business class fares as a proxy) to save 9 hours of flight time. My assertion is that there's relatively few people on any given route who have enough money and fly that route enough to make this a viable niche outside of a very limited set of routes.

> I shudder taking my family with me on such trips

I hear you on that! But also the notion of spending $7k for each of us is somehow worse.

As you say though, the cost is all the difference. Is business class the correct proxy?

Per Boom's website, they are targeting price points that would let businesses economically sell seats at normal business class fares. However, knowing airlines, I would be surprised if they sold tickets for less than (say) 1.5x the highest subsonic fare for the route.

Using the example above, that would put supersonic flights in the range of 10x economy, which feels about right for airline pricing. (At least until there are tons of supersonic flights to push down prices.)

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