Singapore Airlines Concorde
mainlymiles.com
mainlymiles.com
This is very interesting, because current Singapore-Heathrow direct flights are around 13 hours. I wouldn't pay first-class++ fares for a 3-hour flight time reduction in a tiny, cramped cabin with worse pressurisation and ventilation than first class on modern A380s, B777s and A350s that currently ply the route.
Whether the lack of non-stop service was on account of routing and range or of lack of sufficient travel demand I don't know.
Current routing appears to traverse Pland, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. I could see much of that not being advisable in the 1970s.
<https://www.airportia.com/flight-img/7760680/sq308-sin-lhr-s...>
Looks like London-Singapore flights do the same
This leads to sometimes quite extreme differences in travel times between two cities depending on whether a Western or e.g. Chinese airline are conducting the flight (e.g. London-Shanghai), since Chinese airlines can still overfly both Europe and Russia.
This isn't unheard-of. Qantas does (or used to) do this as well, running SYD-LAX-JFK, for efficiency reasons.
Cabotage laws prohibit 081/CCA from carrying any passengers on the domestic leg of that route except the ones that are booked on the international leg of the journey as well. So it's not like you can just book a flight with them domestically.
It's less the airlines being cautious
(like they finally started being
over Ukraine, but not until MH17)
What changed after MH17 was that avoiding it was mandated by the relevant authorities.
https://simpleflying.com/russia-overflight-charge-hike/
They skyrocketed (pun intended) by 20% just in 2023, amount to $1.7bn and are justified by the radar and route operators, and by the …security provided by the Russian army.
After downing the MH317, many airlines avoided the Ukrainian airspace… in profit of the (unavoidable?) Russian one, further benefiting Russia for this horrible crime. Killing those people may even have provided more revenue to Russia.
For the actual current route, check the flight tracking services like this: https://planefinder.net/data/flight/SQ305/history/4-48720917
So, it's UK->Belgium->Germany->Czechia->Austria->Hungary->Romania->Bulgaria->Turkey->Iran->Pakistan->India->Malaysia->Singapore
If you know of a more representational route I'd appreciate your sharing it. My previous link was based on a search for London-Singapore air routes.
Hrm ... I suppose FlightAware or FlightRadar24 might show this, and yes, it does.
BA21 seems to fly over Russia per FlightAware:
<https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/BAW21>
SIA308 flies a more southerly route, crossing the Black Sea and Turkey rather than overlying Ukraine, and conspicuously avoiding Afghan airspace:
"ARRIVED OVER 11 YEARS AGO"
BA11 seems to be among British Airways current LHR->SIN offerings. Here's yesterday's flight path, which largely resembles Singapore Airways. Flight time 13h15m.
<https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/BAW11/history/202403...>
When I flew from Helsinki, Finland to Hong Kong this summer, the plane avoided flying through Russian airspace, so not sure it's much better now than in the 70s, for some routes at least.
"Avoiding Russian airspace: From a shortcut to a detour" - https://www.finnair.com/en/bluewings/world-of-finnair/avoidi...
> On Monday 28 February 2022 Russia closed its airspace as a countermeasure to EU airspace closure. This meant many changes to Finnair’s Asian services, as most of Finnair’s flights between Europe and Asia have used the shortest, fastest, and most environmentally sound route over Russia.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_in_the_Russian_inva... [1]https://www.npr.org/2023/03/18/1162659715/russian-53rd-anti-...
https://www.airportia.com/flight-img/7760680/sq308-sin-lhr-s...
Supercruising at Mach 2 is a huge accomplishment and I don't think there's any aircraft in operation that can still do that. Jetfighters can do it while afterburning but it is impossible to reach Singapore that way.
I just don't see a supercruising aircraft being possible at Mach 3.
Concorde cruising supersonic on dry power was apparently due to the variable intake ramps (https://www.heritageconcorde.com/air-in-take-system), which presented compressed subsonic air to the compressors at supersonic speeds, bypassing excess air. This reduced the work that the compressors had to do, avoiding the surge issues with the J-58 which the A-12 family of aircraft ran in to. There is probably a bit of stretch there, as Concorde was limited by airframe temperature, but the temperature of the compressed intake would probably be the next limitation. As far as I know, Concorde was the only supersonic-native aircraft, with best range being achieved at M1.4.
Or is this a tradeoff of time versus climate, where time won?
A quick search says about 40 minutes to refuel a jet, so a stopover is going to add at least an hour, probably more because they have to come out of supersonic, etc.
A flight from London to Singapore. How much fuel would it need without stops, versus how much fuel in the least-fuel case (but more-stops case)?
I'm sure there's someone who can plug in numbers into a flight planner here, I'm interested in actual numbers.
Heathrow - Changi: 63933 kgs
Heathrow - Tehran: 26957 kgs
Tehran - Changi: 39580 kgs
Maybe the fees and organization of refueling tips the balance?
That's probably around 2 hours extra. And this in turn can require the plane to carry additional pilots and flight attendants.
Qantas is planning to launch 18–21 hour routes in 2026 with economy class, using modified A350-1000 with an extra fuel tank in the hold.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangaroo_Route#Project_Sunrise
SIN-BAH: 3698 miles, 4 hrs 6 mins, Mach 2.02 cruising speed
BAH-LHR: 3120 miles, 4 hrs 21 mins, Mach 2.02 cruising speed
SIN-BAH: 4135 miles, 4 hrs 6 mins, Mach 1.3 average speed
The BAH-LHR leg is even trickier.
Anyhow, it's little wonder that a direct non-stop is near the Concorde's time with these restrictions and the refueling stop.
In an aviation context, those are most likely nautical miles (equivalent to 1 minute of a degree in north-south direction, which is why 10,000 km (initially defined as the distance from the equator to the pole) is basically 5,400 NM (90 degrees from the equator to the pole, times 60 minutes/degree)) rather than statute miles, which are some certain number of yards and feet in that quaint customary system used still used by some people in the USA, Liberia, and Myanmar.
Indeed, according to the interweb, the distance between Singapore (Singapore Changi Airport) and Manama (Bahrain International Airport) is 3935 miles / 6333 kilometers / 3420 nautical miles.
OK, if those are nautical miles this does make much more sense — 3698nm is 280 nautical miles (320 miles) longer than the great circle route. It's a bit longer than the naive calculation I made — increasing the average speed (and time at cruise) a little bit, too.
Then the BAH-LHR leg is more interesting too — its great circle route is 2754 nm, so they're going 366 nm (420 miles) out of their way. Their listed distance is approximately what it'd be if they routed through the Mediterranean over Malta.
https://www.greatcirclemap.com/?routes=BAH-LHR%2C%20BAH-MLA-...
Well, I did remember correctly that the service operated from Dallas (to NY or Washington). Subsonic only, and with lots of crazy adaptation to fit the crazy laws, like changing the aircraft registration number on each flight.
But all those pictures I saw were advertising drawings: https://www.heritageconcorde.com/braniff-airways-concorde-op...
"Domestic flights between Dallas-Fort Worth and Washington Dulles airports were operated by Braniff with its own cockpit and cabin crews. During the domestic flights, the Braniff's registration numbers were affixed to the fuselage with temporary adhesive vinyl stickers. At Washington Dulles, the cockpit and cabin crews were replaced by ones from Air France and British Airways for the continued flight to Europe, and the temporary Braniff registration stickers were removed. This process was reversed after alighting in Washington Dulles from Europe for the domestic flights to Dallas-Fort Worth."
Presumably own cockpit crew, but I had an instant vision of a replaceable cockpit module that was swapped out at Dulles.
Operating as an American owned airline between Dallas and Washington allowed them to take Dallas-Washington passengers, rather than only Dallas-Europe passengers. This was essential for the economics of the flight to work. At the time BA and AF had 3rd and 4th freedoms, and possibly 5th, but were not allowed to fly passengers on solely domestic itineraries -- a process called "Cabotage".
> 1979 Feb – May one way – $154 – $169 /Sept – Oct one way – $194
> 1980 Feb – one way – $227
so more than $900 today to fly one way on a flight that today you can have for $40 one way on a budget carrier! I guess I don't mind the extra hour it takes on a 737 or A321.
Although the more fair comparison would be to the competing prices at the time, not today's prices - any ticket was quite a bit more expensive in 1979-80, so that factors in.
The Wikipedia article quotes a slightly different number than the article, yet it still amounts to a $200,000,000 plane (in modern $) with only 100 seats that eats fuel. Even at $900 (modern $) you quote, it would still take 2150 full flights to recoup the roll-away cost without anything else. (Interweb says base 737 is $90 million (modern $) with ~160 seats.)
And then there's the factor of 30x development program costs to consider (bathed in by Britain/France). The expected 350 orders, got 100, built 20. The decade extended development hell. The huge fuel cost jump on release. The Concorde is neat, it's just Murphy's Law was all over that plane.
Living in SE London, I find already some planes incredibly noisy, so cannot imagine what it must have been.
The Vulcan is (or was!) my favourite plane sound, beating out the Merlin-engined stuff and even Concorde. Four Olympus engines, plus the howl. Can't be bettered! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_ARSE8jEHQ
We forget now that Concorde was a politically-motivated attempt to demonstrate that the UK and France were still relevant in the aerospace industry and the project itself was plagued with costly development inefficiencies due to the desire to split the work between the UK and French participants. E.g. working in both metric and imperial units. Building parts in multiple factories.
The Soviet equivalent (Tu-144) crashed and burned at the Paris air show and never had any economic justification. The Boeing 2707 was cancelled before it even flew because of cost overruns following the failure of an abortive swing-wing design. Concorde itself only became profitable to operate when the govt wrote off the development costs in 1983 in a deal described as "among the most disastrous conducted by a government minister" [0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde#British_Airways_buys_...
The net result was a company that now outsells Boeing, especially in light of the latter's quality issues. Even though Concorde never made money (and never really could make money w/ the supersonic restrictions it had), I think it was still a win for the companies and countries involved.
This isn't really true. If you look at the British case for example, there were alternative planes in development that asked for British funding. While those projects were British lead, they had specifically designed them to have suppliers all over Europe, including France.
Now that plane could have been a failure or a success, we wont know. Looking at the design, it seems to have some potential.
The French on the other hand might have invested their money in another kind of plane primarily from France but with supply chains outside of France as well.
You could see something like Airbus emerging out of that too. Or maybe something that wasn't Airbus but like Airbus. Or a you could see a British lead company that has success in the narrow body world and later a French plane with success in the Wide-body world. Those could eventually merge.
History could have gone many ways, and could have failed many ways. That we have Airbus now does track back to Concord, but is not true that its clear that without Concord we wouldn't have something Airbus like.
Did the parent claim that? Bit of a strawman if not.
Agree, although I'd love to know how many of Concorde's backers were considering this long-game effect. I suspect that the Airbus of today would be seen as even more fantastic than a supersonic aircraft.
The initial success of the A300 was also unrelated to the Concorde, so Europe would probably have gotten their successful aviation industry today either way.
Its funny how its beloved by the "free market" types when it was just a welfare flight for those who thought themselves too self-important to fly a few more hours between major far-away cities.
113 people died in 2000. It wasn't exactly the safest plane out there either.
With teleconferencing and modern technology, the need for the business class to show up to far-away places should go down. But a lot of it is entitlement, that is to say, show up for a meeting then enjoy a free vacation while "working."
Everything about the Concorde was corrupt if not classist. It was a mistake even if the engineering was impressive. Imagine if that money would instead have gone to public transportation. We'd have the Chunnel in the 70s instead of the 90s.
You can't just go out and buy such innovation. It's the natural by-product of relentless pursuit of borderline impossible goals.
The Concorde project was certainly good at fostering Anglo French cooperation in aerospace but it's difficult to imagine the counterfactual scenario where the cooperation is doomed to failure because the debut product is a commercially viable subsonic aircraft rather than a technically impressive aircraft that doesn't sell. Similarly, whilst some of the R&D investment in control systems did find it's way into the A300, the A320's digital fly by wire is a completely different system, and it's difficult to imagine the scenario where a nascent Airbus project doesn't consider fly by wire because they hadn't figured out delta wings or droop noses yet
> It's the natural by-product of relentless pursuit of borderline impossible goals.
No it isn't. Its a direct product of the choice to develop it, and funding it.
Increasing electric support had been going into aircraft for a while and any new development of a major air plane would consider it.
At best it might have slightly push forward adoption of that technology.
Not sure what 'free market' types you are talking about. Most 'free market' types I know were and are not in pro of such projects.
> Imagine if that money would instead have gone to public transportation.
I totally agree with you that money invested in high speed trains all over Europe would have been a far better investment. And you can support just as many jobs and you can do just as much research if you really want to.
Britain at the time actually decided between Concrode and more practical single isle plane more like the 737. A workhorse type plan that you could at least make an argument about beyond creating jobs.
The innovation that killed Concorde was the lie flat business seat. You could be cramped in the Concorde’s leather bus seat for three hours, or you could save money and get a sleep in for six hours.
BA and AF managed to keep the zombie fleet going very profitably all the way until the end in the early 2000s, and that business wasn't killed by the lie flat business class seat either. It was killed by the impossibility of continuing to operate a tiny fleet of '60s planes forever.
Now if you said that the reason we don't have ANY supersonic passenger jets today is because lie flat business seats are good enough, then that's a more defendable position, but I'd still say that the overland flight restrictions limiting any SST to just a couple of routes is a bigger factor.
When I flew on Concorde the one thought I never had was "I wish I had a lie flat seat and half the airspeed".
A six to three hour flight is not really worth the premium. At the same time no supersonic flight has the range to do transpacific where the time difference would be much greater.
The extra $4K or so in your pocket pays for a lot of reduced comfort for 10 or so hours.
A schedule I found was:
BA002 dep JFK 08:30 -> arr LHR 17:15
BA003 dep LHR 18.25 -> arr JFK 17:00
Still, certainly allowed "oh crap, need to get to london to do some very important same day business (and return the next day)"
BA 001 LHR-JFK 10.30am arrive JFK 9am
BA 002 JFK-LHR 9am arrive LHR 17.25
BA 003 LHR-JFK 18.25pm arrive JFK 5pm
BA 004 JFK-LHR 12pm arrive LHR 8pm
A same-day return would be useless as you'd have only 3 hours at JFK.
Suborbital spaceflight would be the ultimate: UK to Australia in an hour.
That would be an improvement, I guess, but Amdahl’s law still says you’re going to spend at least a day on the trip.
Couple of hours to get to the airport, arriving to the airport three to four hours in advance to account for the variance in check-in, security, and immigration times and to get through the overpriced mall itself, then anywhere between ten minutes and over an hour for immigration and customs depending on what flights arrive at the same time, then something like half an hour waiting for your luggage unless you’re very lucky, then again a couple of hours to get from the airport to wherever you actually want to be.
I’ve seen very few efforts to reduce any of this over the last two decades, and basically none as far as the things happening inside the airport are concerned. (Well, OK, automated immigration checks are a thing, but if you are one of a flight of people ineligible for them, fuck you, here are one or two border control officers that every one of you will be funnelled through.)
So while I can appreciate the idea of less miserable long-haul flights, I don’t think “in an hour” is worth anything but a sad chuckle. And I haven’t even accounted for the time you’ll need to spend searching for prices and rearranging your schedule to work around the price discrimination machine. Air travel just sucks, and I don’t think neat aerospace engineering alone can get around that.
Since when does it take a couple of hours to get to the airport for the average traveler? That would only be the case for someone who lives in a very rural area far away from the nearest major airport.
> arriving to the airport three to four hours in advance
3 hours is what's recommended for international flights, but even then thats a conservative recommendation to be safe. "3 to 4 hours" is quite excessive.
> a couple of hours to get from the airport to wherever you actually want to be.
Again, the average traveler is not traveling for a couple of hours to get from their destination airport to their final destination. I can't find the stats, but if I had to guess, the majority of travelers final destination is within an hour of the airport they land at.
I definitely agree with you that all of these aspects of air travel need to be made much more efficient, but inflating these times just paints an inaccurate picture of the travel time benefits that supersonic travel brings.
I agree completely with you that the faff at either end needs to reduce, and long-haul travel will always be a time sink, but I still think reducing the in-air duration for those ultra-long journeys would be huge. The faff getting better what with removing liquids limits and not needing to pull electronics out of carry-on. Check-in can sometimes be a pain, but I've found it to be fairly ok both within the UK and AU most of the time. Combining a few things together - BA's 23kg carry-on limit, removed liquids limits, online check-in with etickets - would go a long way to streamlining it. Combine those things with a reduced in-air duration to make it ~8-hour duration event and I think it'd be much more comfortable, more in line with flying east-coast to west-coast AU.
What would I pay for it, and would I opt for it over doing a layover in e.g. SEA if I had the spare time to do so? No idea, honestly.
Well, you can pay for lie-flat seating but obviously it's a big premium.
I'm not saying I'd not take it as an option ...
There’s been so much innovation in business class, but relatively little in economy over the last few decades. Is it because airlines are afraid of cannibalising their business seats? Or regulatory issues regarding non-standard seats?
If anyone can figure out how to give me a lie flat bunk for the same weight and volume per passenger as economy (or even premium economy) they’ve got my business for eternity. Sitting down for 11 hours would feel like torture in comparison.
So they'd have to design something really complicated, or get the governments to change the rules.
the regulation is not really that the seats have to be sat up per se, but that the plane has to be evacuatable in X amount of time, and the only way to do that for your average person is for them to be sitting upright. Which makes sense; it takes a lot of time for someone to get out of a lie flat position.
Back in the prop days, there was something like bunk-type arrangements that still exist in some sleeper trains. (I took something not that different from Beijing to Shanghai a number of years back.)
If I decided that from now on, I'm only walking to and from airports rather than driving or taking transit, does my multi hour walk to the airport make it so that airplanes are now as slow as driving places and therefore not worth it for any domestic flying? No, that would of course be a ridiculous conclusion.
The other huge advantage with picking the early flights - if something goes wrong you'll get there later on a later flight almost always, so you can cut the times a bit closer and not be terribly worried.
If you're on the last flight out that day, missing it is bad news.
Add some time for people + luggage to leave the UK, and to enter Australia. (There is time for both countries to inspect luggage even if we don't see them doing it.)
Then add some more because the flight is much less regular and costs £1000 rather than £100, so missing it has a worse outcome.
Check-in is now online, bag drop is automated, security is a breeze with Verified Traveller or PreCheck, immigration and customs are simplified with NEXUS/Global Entry/APEC, and airline status can get you priority baggage. I am often in the airport lounge within 15 minutes of arriving at the airport, with that all completed. Same with immigration. Plenty of countries offer concierge immigration schemes if you pay between $50 and $300.
> Couple of hours to get to the airport
You have to be in a pretty sparse area for this to be the case, so a lot of this just comes down to living far from a city.
MUC:
- 10-20 minutes from parking to baggage drop off, depending on where ypu park, can be almost 30 minutes for the parking you ise for vacation (and not the close by ones you can put in your travell expenses)
- 10 minutes, if you are unlucky a lot more, from baggage drop off until you pass security
- another 10-15 minutes to get fr security to your gate at Terminal 3
So, at the very least 30, in praxis more like 45 minutes, at the airport alone. And MUC is pretty well built and organized in that regard.
The local airport so, which has no real commercial flihhts anymore, is at max. 15 minutes from parking to gate, all included.
That said, I agree with the basic point that transatlantic tends to be an all-day thing (or a red-eye) and shaving some hours off the flight itself doesn't really change that. (And even if it made it easier to get to continental Europe on a daytime flight from eastern US, that matters less with modern lie-flat seating.)
If you park at the discount ramps, you're usually adding at least 15 minutes if not more. Transit adds significantly more for most people, unless you have a train to the gate right outside your door.
> Most people live a reasonable distance from a decent-sized airport. Half the people in the United States live within 17 miles of a decent-sized airport, and ninety percent of the country lives within 58 miles (about an hours drive). Twenty-five percent of the population lives pretty darn close: less than 9 miles.
From https://www.mark-pearson.com/airport-distances/ - he used any airport with more than 100k passengers a year, so it's not counting rinky-dinky commuter airports.
I live in London, UK. There are 4 airports in the greater London area. But the distance to closest airport means little. I never get to chose: given the airline and destination, that narrows it down to 1 of these airports; or on rare occasions 2, and then I chose based on flight price and time of day, and only then proximity.
An hour's drive :-) I'm closer than that to Logan in Boston and planning for 2 hours in the morning is not unreasonable at all. (And basically the car company I use won't let me plan for a lot less than that because they don't want to be on the hook if I miss my flight.)
Easiest for me is "drive myself and park at the closest ramp" but that's the most expensive after a certain number of days.
After a couple issues, e.g. arriving on a cold 10pm night to a flat tire I couldn't get off, I mostly just won't drive in any longer.
There are a couple bus services from the burbs but I haven't really been motivated to check them out for years.
Bus is hell, especially with luggage.
Abusing friendships is also a perfectly viable one, harder to get the company to reimburse ;)
These days I could probably optimize a bit by taking car service in and grabbing an Uber to come back home. But really isn't worth the trouble.
If you're eligible, there are plenty of us who aren't.
I waited well over two hours at JFK last month.
> security is a breeze
I never did work out why it's OK for aircraft to fly in to US airspace with non-PreCheck passengers who've not had to remove their shoes at security.
This may once have been true but I don't believe it's the case any more, at least not at the major European hubs I've been to.
There is no additional security screening if you fly British Airways to the USA out of LHR. This was no additional security at Frankfurt last month either.
Despite shoes not needing to be routinely removed at most (all?) European airports' security checkpoints?
I had to remove shoes at security at both JFK and SFO recently.
Speaking from the center of Shanghai, it does indeed take a couple of hours to get to the airport by subway, though a taxi is more like one hour.
Airports don't get sited in dense locations - they make a lot of noise - so I can't quite follow your logic. If you live in a city, it's going to take you a while to get to the airport.
Nope, unless you mean "You have to be in a pretty sparse area for it to be that low".
From North London, you should plan on more than 90 minutes to get to Heathrow, regardless of which transport mode you choose. It's not because of sparseness or "far from a city" of the parts in-between, quite the opposite.
Gatwick is worse.
Stansted is slightly is better, but I'm seldom going somewhere that flies from Stansted.
Yes, this is one of the reasons why I have not flown from Sweden to the Netherlands for about 4 years now but used trains instead. The actual flight takes anywhere from 1.5 hours to ~5 hours depending on the route taken (which in turn depends on pricing at the moment of booking). Getting to the airport from the farm takes more time, having to arrive there at least 1 but preferably 2 hours in advance to partake in the security theatre adds to that. Regular public transport does not stop at the airport although there are plenty of routes which pass it by at some distance, instead there is a specific airport bus which costs about 3 times what the normal bus costs. This is added to the normal public transport costs because that bus only starts from central station. Then there is the flight itself where they're trying their utmost best to nickel and dime passengers on everything from breathing space to the privilege of taking more than a change of underwear. Arriving in the Netherlands the trip from the airport to my final destination is a bit better arranged since there is a train station right underneath Schiphol Airport. But... going back via Schiphol has become quite tedious since they seem to have problems with their security theatre show, somehow the actors need a lot of time to play their parts which often leads to hour-long delays. Back in Sweden there is that whole special-bus-thing again to get to the place where I can take a train which brings me to the station from where it is a 3 km walk home. Total time taken ends up somewhere around 5 to 10 hours depending on flight time.
The trip by train takes anywhere from ~13 hours to ~21 hours, depending on schedule, route and (ever-present) delays in Germany. I leave early in the morning to walk to the station, take a train, move to the next one, repeat that 4-5 times and I'm at my destination. I can take as much luggage with me as I can carry which is a lot, if I feel like filling my backpack with Shukirkens or lethal nail clippers or $deity forbid more than 1 litre of liquids there is nobody bothering me, I get to have actual leg room and room to move those legs if I feel like it - you can walk quite a distance in some trains - plus a table and an outlet so I can hack away while going in more or less the right direction. There tends to be network connectivity in trains as well and if I end up on one where this does not work - which happens regularly - I can use my phone to get online. There's restaurants for those who want but I tend to bring my own. Delays sometimes mess up my schedule and I have spent hours in damp and dank tunnels under German stations during the hours of night when everything is closed and the only company to be had is the drunks who keep on coming by to beg for a euro 'to call their sick mother' but this, fortunately, is the exception rather than the rule. In short things are not perfect but...
Traveling by train is like going on a journey while air travel has been turned into a chore. It might save me half a day but it gains me the same in time to work/relax/read/talk to other travellers/do nothing.
These days even if the airport is far off (newer airports usually are ) they are typically connected via public transit pretty well. Munich is a good example - airport is good 30+km from the city but there is fairly cheap and frequent train service.
Frankfurt is not a pleasant airport but at least it has a long-distance, high-speed train station.
People don’t think long distance trains when talking about commuting to airports, usual expectation of any urban airport is it well connected to the city center
Have you been to Frankfurt airport long distance train station? It's pretty busy. That many airports have worse connections doesn't mean doing better would be unnecessary.
I more or less regularly have to use Munich or Frankfurt airport and take a long distance train. Flying closer to to/from my destination in Germany would be possible in theory, but is not attractive, neither by price nor schedule options. So I have the choice between a horrible airport with a good train station and a more decent airport with time-wasting train connections.
So IMO the ultimate would be something more along the lines of zeppelins. A week from Taiwan to California isn't so bad if I get to spend the time relaxing in a way similar to how I do on a sleeper train. Plus, airships.
If this is surprising, keep in mind that the rocket is only on for 8 minutes, and most of the flight is experiencing zero drag from being above the atmosphere.
If there are any decadent flights I'd like to take from seeing YouTube videos, it would be one on Etihad's "The Residence", but even that doesn't exist any longer.
This still exists. It is flown from London and New York to Abu Dhabi.
Q: How much more would customers pay for this compared with - say - business class on the same route?
Emirates (also ethihad ) have for example this ultra luxury suite with its own shower and bedroom in normal flights they sell for like 20k+/per .
It is targeted towards people who have chartered a private jet (100-200k+) and by most accounts the service is successful. However it just 1-2 suites in few select routes .
My point is it may not be typical business class passenger that is the target market, perhaps it those taking a private jet between these two destinations and they will definitely pay a lot .
Look at this way the “billable rate “ for a moderately sized company senior management would be in the range in thousands of dollars/hour, so 10-15 hours saved could be one way to price this service .
The key question is does it require million people / year or only thousand/ year to break even . You can easily do the latter , million people a year would be quite difficult.
Thanks to in-flight wifi you can still be working (and therefore be billing) while travelling.
People billing thousands of dollars an hour are not opening a laptop traveling or not, they have enough executive assistants for that.
People at this level[1] want to get things done quickly, if they can pay to avoid loosing a half a week for couple of meetings traveling back and forth, they won't hesitate to.
[1] Any level really, but executives can both afford to and get a return on this kind of expense
Personally I'll probably take a more comfortable trip over an incrementally faster trip. But that's just me of course. (Unless it possibly avoids a red-eye.) Business-class trans-Pacific is a bit boring but it's not really that painful.
(As I wrote elsewhere, my dad also used to prefer routinely flying first class in a 747 vs. taking the Concorde.) Comfort isn't just about speed.
People do that because it takes 15 hours to travel. 100 years before people will go visit say family for few weeks or even months because travel was slow, now we fly for thanksgiving and back at work the following week. Travel behavior changes depending on the mode of transport and cost of it.
> incrementally faster trip
it is not incremental, we are not shaving couple of hours, it is radically faster trip, 15hr -> 1 hr is a huge difference.
> prefer routinely flying first class in a 747 vs. taking the Concorde
Concorde was quite popular for that one route though, that was not enough to save it.
The challenge then was not there were not other economically viable routes - there were, it was just that nobody was allowing supersonic flight over land, for example San Fransisco -> New York route would have been very successful.
With 2.5 hour on a Concorde a flight you can work (i.e. do meetings) in both cities (esp NY->SF) on the same day. It is a 5 hour flight now you can really work in one city the day you are traveling.
...and those annoying time zones and the resulting jet lag*
If we could magically get from Europe to Australia in 5 minutes, I doubt that that many people would use that as an excuse to go to Australia for a shorter time.
* I've visited Australia three separate times in the last ~15 years, all three trips were very short due to external constraints, my longest stay so far was for one night
Wait until the safety and security people do risk and threat assessments on that. Worst case is fairly close to a suborbital kinetic impact missile, aimed at the region of a major city from halfway around the globe, with less than an hour's notice.
The thumbnail is a bit click-bait, but the video itself has a lot of depth. They give Hermeus space to present itself in a very positive light. As a non-expert having watched the video, it does seem at least plausible that this company may yet succeed.
They mention fuel costs in passing, but they don't talk about carbon emissions. That's probably fair, since carbon is a much broader issue than just aviation. It's probably more productive to focus on shutting down coal plants than stifling innovation in air travel. But it's worth bearing in mind that positive things like hypersonic air travel do have a cost.
Something like a commercial ramjet engine developed by a start-up is not even the same solar system: there we talk, realistically, billions and closer to a decade, if it works technically. And then you need a market for that engine, which means demand (doubtfull, but who knows) and more importantly, an aircraft. And the last bit again is aroubd a decade and another couple of billions.
Engine and aircraft development can, and has, been done in parallel. It still takes longer so, as both development projects depend on each other, the A400M would be a recent example of that approach. If Hermeus doesn't have a development partner for the airframe, realistically, if everything (!) goes well, we talk about at least 15-20 years from now. Not sure if VC funding is the right model for stuff like this.
Throw in enough novel ideas and it might double...
Similar for the Concorde.
Nowadays, we would be much better placed to put people in space. But fortunately we are perhaps wiser (or perhaps forced to be wiser against our own impulses), and are still not lining up to re-ignite manned space flight.
I'm all for space exploration, but manned space exploration does not (yet?) make sense, and neither does space tourism so far.
Its just that the US kind of messed up its space investment strategy. Instead of leveraging all the parts of Apollo it was systematically killed.
Had the doubled down on Apollo and simply continued investing in the technology they could have done impressive things.
The could have built a Saturn 1C as a workhorse rocket for the military and commercial. And then have the Saturn V as your super heavy for the occasional deep space probe, huge telescope or space station.
The Apollo capsule could incrementally be made reusable and could continue to be used for LEO or occasional moon missions.
During Apollo they were already deep in development on second generation version of the different components.
This was not actually finically unsustainable, it was just financially unsustainable while also investing in Shuttle. And because a Saturn 1C wasn't considered, the military built itself up with Titan rockets instead.
Counterfactually, all the tax payer money wasted on manned space flight would have been used for something else, and would have driven some other technology, and at that other spending would have had direct utility. (Especially if the money had been left in the tax payers pockets.)
See 'What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen' https://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss.html?chapter_...
> Had the doubled down on Apollo and simply continued investing in the technology they could have done impressive things.
You really need to learn to start thinking in terms of opportunity costs. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost
> [...] it was just financially unsustainable while also investing in Shuttle.
I agree that the Space Shuttle was an even greater waste than the Apollo program. They overshot their projected cost per kg to orbit by 100,000% (one thousand times).
But I hold that approximately all manned space flight is a waste of tax payer money.
> specially if the money had been left in the tax payers pockets.
This was peak suberbia and peak people buying cars. I think there is a good argument being made that more money invested in suberbia and cars wouldn't be good investment. In fact, there is a good argument that this is a negative investment for society.
On the other hand, Apollo lead to a massive investment in engineering and scientific talent and to a huge amount of technology development that was then utilized by lots of other industries.
If I could have picked, I would have preferred some of that investment into nuclear technology. But that wasn't really in the cards.
People have always been critical of Apollo as specially on the left they would have preferred social programs, and libertarians would have preferred nothing.
I am libertarian leaning myself but as far as government spending goes, this is some of the better things they can do. They did arguably spend to much to fast, rather then taking a measured approach.
Government spending that clears a reasonable bar of utility is fine by me. Eg overall I think I am getting good value for my tax dollars here in my adopted home of Singapore. (Of course, I don't agree with every last item on the budget.)
> This was peak suberbia and peak people buying cars. I think there is a good argument being made that more money invested in suberbia and cars wouldn't be good investment. In fact, there is a good argument that this is a negative investment for society.
I am glad that we have you to tell people that what they want is bad, and that they should want something else instead.
(Btw, it's spelled suburbia. It's not a problem for me, just thought you might want to know.)
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39598737 for more of a fleshed out argument.
Suburbia and cars were massively subsidized by the government and have a very high cost for society.
I don't want to tell people what to do, but if a damaging thing is subsidized, suggesting that subsidizing something else might be better isn't much of a stretch.
Yes, and you can probably predict my opinion of those subsidies.
So I'm not sure why you strawman me to be in favour of suburbia, or subsidies for suburbia?
(Btw, I think we should shift more of the funding for roads onto usage fees for them. Ie toll roads. The technology for road usage tracking has become a lot better and cheaper in the last few decades.)
> I don't want to tell people what to do, but if a damaging thing is subsidized, suggesting that subsidizing something else might be better isn't much of a stretch.
Two wrongs don't make a right. Just drop both subsidies.
It's the same thing with free trade: unilateral free trade is optimal, no matter whether the other guys insists on damaging their own economy with protectionism. So mutual 'trade agreements' are useless. (Or should be.)
So, one can imagine the S1B evolving over the years into something like a F9, with the first stage being recovered.
The idea of designing boosters to minimize cost rather than maximize performance also goes back to the late 60s. The biggest problem is government contractors have different incentive structures than SpaceX does.
I think you are proving my point? Manned spaceflight is strictly for entertainment and pissing contests only.
So we should finance it like entertainment, instead of making random tax payers suffer for your amusement.
> And anyway the astronauts brought back a moon rock to give to the Soviets.
Yes? Obviously you are going to be all smug and rub your success in your adversaries face.
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Btw, just to be clear: I also find space flight inspiring, and I hope I live long enough to see the vast bulk of humanity living in space habitats (while still increasing the absolute number of humans on earth). I want to see space elevators (via active support) and all that good stuff.
Two things:
(1) The early manned space flight barely contributed to these long term goals. It's only recently thanks to the private sector that launch costs are starting to come down. And the other big advances are coming from better robotics and better computing, both of which are being developed on trajectories so far largely independent of space exploration.
(2) I don't want to force other tax payers to suffer for my flights of fancy. Just like I don't want to have to finance other people's pet projects with my tax money, either.
See for other examples: The 500 Kei Shinkansen, literally every Intel Core i9 and AMD Ryzen 9 CPU, sports and luxury cars, Boeing 747 "Queen of the Skies" Jumbo and Airbus A380, the Space Shuttle, the F-22 Raptor, and more.
All very impressive pieces of tech and their achievements shouldn't be discounted, but all ultimately an interesting footnote in history as significantly more inferior and practical pieces of tech dominate.
But today’s i9 is tomorrow’s i7 and the i5 the day after tomorrow. So it has its place in the story
i7-14700K: 20 cores (8 performance, 12 efficient) 28 threads 5.6 Ghz
i9-14900K: 24 cores (8 performance, 16 efficient) 32 threads 6 Ghz
It's like ~10% performance difference
Yes, the flights were shorter, but between 9 hours cramped in a tight fuselage with little entertainment and 12 hours in a comfortable chair with headroom and entertainment, I would have taken the latter. There's a sweet spot abive the even more comfortable but vastly slower passenger liners, but Concorde was too extreme - and I guess the suborbital flights imagined by Musk are too far too.
As you say, ocean liners are mostly too slow for anyone who is working but I was surprised to learn recently that they're not necessarily much more expensive than a business class flight.
https://external-preview.redd.it/K5Z9Kd7AkxJz-eQm5I97pZYIDTa...
They're higher margin products, not products that cost so much to make that they'd have to be priced so high.
I don't understand this passage. There were only two supersonic passenger airliners, and Tupolev 144 was obviously off limits for Singapore Airlines. Is it LLM writing?