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Comment by Twirrim | Hacker News Reader

> Together with a few other optimizations, these tweaks yielded over 1,000mi in increased range—enough that we could now afford a remarkable passenger cabin without sacrificing fuel efficiency or range.

Honestly, the way the narrative reads, they're still sacrificing 1,000mi of range in the interests of an improved cabin experience. They've just found an optimisation that enables them to reach a net neutral state.

Given we're effectively talking about fuel efficiency here, it's hard to imagine airlines wanting an improved cabin vs less fuel consumption. All the incentives are on them already to meet a "barest minimum" cabin experience that they can get away with, because every bit of luxury costs them in numbers of passengers, and fuel costs.

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It might be a fad, but the current trend in US public aviation is increasing premium cabins and premium revenue: https://simpleflying.com/why-us-carriers-doubling-down-premi...

This is the reason Delta and United and doing well right now and Southwest and the LCCs are struggling.

It wasn't true just a few years ago, but if this continues as a trend, I could see an airline sacrificing fuel efficiency for a dramatically improved onboard experience.

Premium cabins tend to be a very small proportion of overall seats and are about overcharging for a little extra legroom and service rather than trading off operational flexibility for unique luxury though. Big difference between charging 3x economy rates for 2x the space for a carefully estimated proportion of seats in a mixed configuration (no brainer) and hoping your layout is so good it justifies thirstier, less flexible aircraft to operators (tough sell)...

That said, Boom's customers - if they ever exist - will be a new business class pay extra for supersonic flights category anyway.

> Premium cabins tend to be a very small proportion of overall seats

Most of the profit on a plane is made in business class. If airlines could fly an all-business configuration, they would. The problem is the smallest planes that can do high-paying routes like LON-NYC are bigger than that customer set. So the airline throws in economy seats, often barely breaking even on those, to fill space.

In a world with small airliner planes that can make those transoceanic and transcontinental journeys, I suspect we’ll see more all-business class flights.

Smaller jet aircraft on the same route generally means relatively expensive operating costs: some costs like landing slots and pilots are essentially fixed, whilst others like maintenance, fuel and capital costs don't scale down linearly. The marginal profit on an individual economy class seat might be small, but 100+ of them cover a large portion of the fixed and semi-fixed costs of operating the aircraft, and are relatively easy to fill.

Long range business jets which can comfortably accommodate a typical narrowbody business class cabin exist: nobody is certifying them for all-business class scheduled flights because it wouldn't be profitable to do so; likewise the all-premium 32 seat A318 configuration hasn't been adopted anywhere except the NYC/LON route it didn't really have the range for because it wouldn't be profitable elsewhere. Boom's bet is that supersonic changes that.

> some costs like landing slots

Small detail: most landing slot costs are variable based on aircraft weight.

Landing charges levied on each landing usually have a significant weight component (amongst other variable components like emissions, noise, handling and passenger charges) but the relationship usually isn't linear with passenger capacity. Landing slots required at busier airports to have the right to land at a certain time each week are generally traded between airlines with the slot coordinator's agreement with the value of the slot based mainly on the commercial attractiveness of the time slot.

Absolutely, good point. I don't know why I latched onto charges vs slots.

Another factor in this mix is frequency, which matters a lot, especially to business travellers.

A once-daily supersonic flight might minimize “time in the air” while a once hourly mostly-economy 737 shuttle minimises “time away from home.”

There is one airline that flies all business class. An A321Neo with 76 lie-flat seats, NYC to Paris/Nice/Milan. Random date selection yields $2700 one-way New York to Paris.

https://www.lacompagnie.com/en/about/services

British Airways operated a similar flight between 2009 and 2020: an A318 between LON and NYC with 32 lie-flat seats

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_World_London_City

But that's just it - the airlines have finally (lol) realized that a huge price "Delta" (lolx2) between normal cattle class and first class was a mistake.

People aren't usually paying 4x for first, but they will pay $10 more for Y, $30 for Z, etc.

The future of airlines is fully adjustable planes!

Business Class trades well above 3X tourist class.

> Business Class trades well above 3X tourist class.

If you are a tourist searching business class on Google Flights, of course it’s 5-6x more expensive.

True business class / upper class travelers get discounts of 20-50% for J. And no, they’re not using Amex/Chase Travel.

> True business class / upper class travelers get discounts of 20-50% for J. And no, they’re not using Amex/Chase Travel.

What are they using, then?

Corporate discounts

Huh. Where? I work for a company that's not a FAANG but $200B market cap, and what we get through Concur, Spotnana is at most, 5, occasionally 10% below what I see for the same fare class on Expedia. I have never seen anything approaching 20% cheaper, let alone 50%.

It isnt a trend. This is marketing. Thirty years ago, the a380 was pitched as having room for luxury too. The new plane is always going to have more legroom, wider aisles and better air conditioning than anything before. But it never happens. The pitch to actual operators is the square-feet of floorspace and how many seats can be crammed into that space at given price points. Just like concord, this thing only makes sense with quazi-economy seating. Do not expect to nap on a nice lie-flat seat.

> It isnt a trend. This is marketing

They’re citing historic data. It absolutely is a trend that premium travel is an increasing slice of post-Covid American air travel.

Saw a Jet Blue plane wrapped in Peacock livery today… selling the planes themselves as billboards sure does feel like scraping the bottom of the revenue barrel.

That would be an accurate statement if they were being sold for bottom of the barrel prices.

To be fair, modern airliners, even budget ones, are way more comfortable than Concorde. You can visit one in a museum, it's very cramped, and noisier. Concorde had way better service tho.

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