Comment by EA-3167 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by EA-3167 | Hacker News Reader

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There are some interesting technological developments around fuel efficiency and minimizing the "sonic boom" that's felt on the ground. Neither of those killed Concorde though, because the entire idea of Concorde turned out to be incredibly faulty. MOST people weren't in such a hurry to get from point A to point B that they'd pay 5x-10x a normal business/first class ticket to cut a trip down by 50% or so. The intended 100+ units to be built and sold turned out to be a fantasy, airlines weren't interested.

Now consider what's changed: Back when Concorde was new, airline security was perfunctory and brief, so the time spent in the airport was a fraction of total travel time. Today that represents potentially 2+ hours of your travel time that can't be omitted. For much of Concorde's life the modern internet wasn't a thing, or at least mature; every business traveler didn't have the ability to have a conference call IN MID FLIGHT. Today that's routine.

So what's the hurry exactly? Sure some people might have a need or desire, but the planned jet holds 64 people who are going to have to pay through the nose to make it profitable for an airline. Who are these people who wouldn't rather take a sleeping pill or futz around on their laptop instead?

tl;dr Supersonic civil aviation is an ECONOMIC problem, not a technological one, and the economics haven't changed.

There were enough passengers, and flying the Concorde actually became profitable for the airlines once they figured out they just needed to charge through the nose for it. This was despite prodigious fuel consumption and that fuel becoming much more expensive after the oil crisis.

The main problems were that the requirement to only fly supersonic over water massively limited the possible routes it could fly, and that actually flying in a Concorde was not very comfortable (cramped, tiny windows, hot, vibration etc). Boom promises to tackle both of these, which will open it up to far more routes.

I still don't see this being something large airlines would be overly interested in, but I wonder if there's a private market. If you're Taylor Swift maybe being able to fly from NYC to LA in half the time is well worth it.

> Who are these people who wouldn't rather take a sleeping pill or futz around on their laptop instead?

Me. Time is time. A lay-flat seat intercontinental is already $10+ k within weeks of departure, point to point. Not having to plan around sleeping on the plane or whatnot makes international trips feel domestic.

I suppose the question is whether you feel like spending 3-5 times as much for the same flight, to save a bit of that time. Perhaps you would be, but I think you can understand how most wouldn't, even if they could. That is of course assuming that unlike Concorde, this can do single-hop journeys longer than a trans-Atlantic flight.

> whether you feel like spending 3-5 times as much for the same flight, to save a bit of that time

Plenty of people do for comfort. And these seats don’t look horrendous.

You have a good point, maybe they'll find the sweet spot between price and utility.

I keep seeing you using this $10k figure, where is that coming from? I’m fortunate to fly intl biz class a lot, and I rarely see prices that high. In September I flew SG from NYC to Singapore in biz class for $4k RT.

I spend more than that in premium economy with no Saturday stay and last minute like many business travellers.

So how much would you be willing to pay additionally to get from a 10 hour flight to a 5 hour flight? More than 5k?

My take is it's not even an economic problem. Unless you fly really fast (like Mach 3++), flying east sucks.

Let's assume we have a plane capable of Mach 3+: the SR-71 holds a record for flying from NYC to London in 1h54 and it could do well over Mach 3. Let's assume our plane can do the same in 2 hours.

If you take off from NYC at 10am, you will land at 5pm local time in London. Sure it's a lot faster than a regular flight but you didn't gain as much as flying west bound.

With the same 2 hour flight (because when you fly that high, wind doesn't make such a big difference), you could leave London at 10am and land in NYC at 7am local time, that's so much better.

But that's for a plane doing Mach 3+. Boom is planning to fly slower than Concorde (Mach 1.7 vs Mach 2.02).

Concorde did that in 3 hours FYI.

If it's already going to be expensive and exclusive they can easily design a program where all the passengers have to be some kind of TSA++ pre-approved ahead of time and perhaps have a special terminal and/or security screening line.

The # of passengers on the plane is small so that could also speed up many aspects.

Last time I flew from Heathrow it was 45 minutes from car to take off, and that was with a 20 minute door close.

It doesn’t take 2 hours to go through security , certainly not in the first class section in any case.

Ah yes, let's use the timeline for a first class passenger as the average for how long it takes to go from check-in to take off.

That is the correct benchmark for potential Boom customers.

I fly a couple times a year from Portland, OR.

The line at security is typically 0-20 minutes. Add in walking time, and I'm getting from car to gate in 10-30 minutes.

But I still feel like I need to get to the airport at least 90 minutes, if not 2 hours early, just in case I end up flying on a day where 1 of the 2 security checkpoints is entirely closed and every traveler is now forced to go through a single checkpoint and it's going to take over an hour.

On the live cast the presenter mentioned Boom have already secured ~130 pre-orders, including United Airlines. Not bad considering the Concorde anticipated 100+ orders but only manufactured a fraction of that.

Well Concorde showed pre-orders don't mean much... :-D

Pre-orders are just wind until they're actually delivering product. It doesn't cost the carriers much to make the pre-orders. The calculation is that if it somehow pans out then they won't miss the boat, if the company fails then they aren't really out anything.

To be honest I thought Boom was an investor scam. I didn't think they would get this far. I still don't think they are going to build full scale production models and actually sell them, but I'll give them points for keeping it going. Moller kept his Aircar prototypes going for decades too though.

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