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Comment by smt88 | Hacker News Reader

Why is this an exciting time for aviation? Or more specifically, why should I (a person who never spends more than $2,000 on air travel) be excited?

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Increased adoption will put price pressure on traditional flights making them more affordable

that seems very unlikely. margins are already quite thin, and the airlines are making most of their money with the higher fare tiers. if you remove some of those customers, then its entirely possible that the base fare will increase in response.

This big airlines in the US loose money overall operating flights. They make it up on loyalty programs and credit cards.

Exactly. Now they even make decisions on which routes to offer based on how likely they are to attract customers who use their branded credit cards. The analytics around this are quite sophisticated.

Not particularly knowledgable about this, but I was under the impression the front of the bus subsidizes the back. So if the front opts for more expensive supersonic flights then the back will have to increase in cost to make it profitable to fly subsonic flights at all.

Economy and business seem to be on the same total sum level for revenue.

Economy needs more passengers but I doubt you could make an all business class flight at the size of a typical airplane and sell enough tickets to make up for the lost economy passengers.

https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/travel/our-insights/the-...

Why? They already have price pressure due to some people not having enough money. If the people currently flying business class all move to SSTs, won't the airlines now have to charge more for coach seats fitted in their place because they were previously making much more profit per square area from business passengers?

> If the people currently flying business class all move to SSTs

Which is vanishingly unlikely for almost all routes. A proper premium F or J experience that takes a few more hours is going to be a better deal for most people than a Y-like experience that shaves some hours off, like Concorde was. For a similar parallel, look at luxury travel. Private for the short hops, but the premium cabins on premium carriers are the better experience for longer journeys unless you're one of the truly tiny number of people flying a G6.

Assuming Boom or someone else makes it, it's potentially interesting if you routinely fly business/first class today. Which is thousands of dollars for trans-oceanic flights. So, yeah, if you're looking for bargain economy fares this likely won't ever be for you.

Because I can get somewhere faster for the same price over time.

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