On November 26, 2003, the Concorde supersonic commercial airliner made its final flight. After its mighty engines shut down, the era of supersonic commercial travel ended. Enthusiastic engineers and aviators have been trying to replicate the magic of the Concorde ever since and on January 28, one private company succeeded in a major step to making a modern Concorde a reality. Boom Supersonic just took its XB-1 test plane past the sound barrier, a critical accomplishment in building an airliner that could get passengers from London to New York in as little as 3.5 hours.
The XB-1 and its pilot’s achievement is even bigger than my lede up there suggests it is. Where there have been civil supersonic jets built in the past, none of the operational examples were built right here on American soil. So, even without the context of this company’s goal to make a supersonic airliner, Boom has already done something pretty awesome.
Boom Supersonic has been around for over a decade, but I haven’t written about it for all of this time. Several companies and entities have teased making a sequel to Concorde since 2003. Not a single one has entered production and some of these ambitious projects have failed so hard that their companies aren’t even around anymore. A number of concepts haven’t even gotten much further than renders. Getting a test plane past the sound barrier is a huge deal. Sure, while Boom Supersonic is not at the finish line with its Overture airliner project, it has gotten far closer to finishing the race than any other modern company.
However, the Boom team still have a lot of headwinds to beat, including the same difficulty that took the Concorde out of the sky.
Fantasies Of Speed
It’s sort of amazing that the Concorde even happened in the first place. The de Havilland Comet and the Boeing 707 helped usher in the jet age, a time when flashy, high-speed aircraft flew above bad weather and delivered passengers to far-flung destinations exponentially faster than the propeller-driven aircraft of before.
These aircraft made the world feel a lot smaller for those lucky enough to fly in them. The people who flew on them must have thought the speed was magical. But even before then, there was an obsession with going even faster. The studies that led to the creation of the Concorde began in 1954 and the aircraft would enter service 22 years later. The Concordes were absolute rockstars, as noted by the Smithsonian National Air And Space Museum:
The Concorde entered service with Air France and British Airways in 1976 and rose to fame in no time. It was the transatlantic talk of the town as it was staggeringly fast and luxurious, with excellent service, cuisine, and exclusive airport lounges. With speed and luxury came a hefty price tag of $12,000 for a round trip. Accounting for inflation that would amount to $66,000 today. Concorde shuttled wealthy and often high-profile customers. The supersonic aircraft’s tagline, “Arrive Before You Leave,” advertised its ability to fly faster than the time zones changed.
For most of the Concorde’s 27 years of service, the vast majority of the flights were along two routes: New York to London and New York to Paris. It did eventually expand its routes to include destinations in South America, Bahrain, and Singapore. Even though this expansion represented a significant milestone in the history of supersonic travel, showcasing the versatility and potential for Concorde’s global connectivity, it quickly failed and only the two initial routes remained.
The Smithsonian notes that one of the Concorde’s biggest issues was just that it was outrageously expensive. The governments of Britain and France thought the Concorde would cost $130 million in 1970s money, but it ballooned to $2.8 billion. The governments also thought there was a demand for a few hundred units. Ultimately, just 20 left the factory.
Concorde’s only competitor, the Tupolev Tu-144 (above), entered into passenger service in late 1977, ending less than a year later in 1978 after a tragic crash and a slew of issues. Boeing was also brewing up a competitor in the form of the 2707, but that never went into production. The Concorde really was the only game in town for supersonic passenger travel. Yet, it still failed, from the Smithsonian:
It’s surreal to think about the time of supersonic commercial flight. The thought of being able to fly home to Kathmandu, Nepal, from DC in under 9 hours would be amazing! Here, the question arises: If such a marvel exists, why are our international flights so long, sometimes over 14-16 hours? Where did the Concordes go? Despite being studied by 250 British aeronautical engineers for 5,000 hours (about seven months) of testing, Concorde flights came to a screeching halt after only 27 years of operation on October 24, 2003. The reason? Excessive cost, high fares, and loud noise. On a regular flight, Concordes consumed 6,771 gallons of fuel, which quickly exceeded the profit made from the flight. In addition to that, only a total of 20 Concordes were built and no airline ordered them except for Air France and British Airways, who had to as they were state-run airlines at the time.
Adding on to the unprofitable cost of operation, the restrictions of supersonic travel contributed to the downfall of the Concorde. Since they flew at twice the speed of sound, their flight was restricted to only flying over the ocean as it sent a strong shockwave known as a sonic boom into the air that could shatter the glass of the houses if it flew over residential areas. Besides, when a Concorde flew over a city, it made a lot of noise, leading to numerous complaints every time. Moreover, the emerging environmental movement was entirely against the Concorde. What was once synonymous with supersonic and luxury soon became synonymous with noise and exhaust emissions. Due to concerns over its noise levels, the Concorde was restricted flying transatlantic routes, taking off and landing in New York, Washington, London, and Paris.
Matters were made worse after the Concorde’s single fatal crash in 2000, which further tarnished the aircraft’s image.
You might think it would be foolish to try something like this again, but that hasn’t stopped several entities. In 2003, the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (now Airbus SE) announced it was considering a supersonic transport. That didn’t go anywhere. In 2005, the Japanese Space Agency announced it was testing a scale model of a supersonic transport. Sadly, that project never produced anything. Later, Japan and Europe joined forces on the Zero Emission Hyper Sonic Transport project, which hasn’t produced anything but sometimes still appears in articles with absurd headlines.
Then there are the companies that died trying to make supersonic transports like Aerion Corporation and Supersonic Aerospace International. In short, the supersonic transport space has been an absolute bloodbath, and while there’s been a lot of talk and even some development, nobody has really come close to putting your butt in the seat of an aircraft that flies at twice the speed of sound or faster.
The Boom Overture
This might make you wonder why companies keep trying to make supersonic airliners happen. The explanation is that the science and engineering behind supersonic aircraft are getting better. At the same time, Boom Supersonic thinks it can convert some of the millions of business class and first class passengers into passengers on its plane.
Boom Supersonic was founded in Denver in 2014 as Boom Technology. Its founder is Blake Scholl, a man with a resume full of tech company experience. So, how does a tech guy get into starting a supersonic transport manufacturer? Scholl says he’s been enamored with aviation since he was a kid and he wanted to revive the Concorde ever since seeing one in a museum.
Boom has since gotten over $700 million from a mind-boggling setlist of tech bros, venture capital funds, investment funds, Japan Airlines, and so many more.
Boom’s promise is the Overture, a supersonic commercial aircraft that would cruise at Mach 1.7, seat 64 to 80 people, have a range of 4,888 miles, and do so economically enough that the ticket for a ride in an Overture would cost about the same as a first-class ticket on a typical aircraft. Boom says the Overture would fly twice as fast over water as current airliners and 20 percent faster over land.
The Overture itself is crawling closer to reality thanks to its test plane. In 2019, the company finally got enough funding to prove its concept with the XB-1 “Baby Boom” demonstrator, a manned aircraft one-third-scale of what the Overture is supposed to be. The demonstrator rolled out on Oct. 7, 2020, but didn’t take its first flight until 2024.
The Test Plane
This little guy, registration N990XB, has a triplet of General Electric J85-15 turbojets good for 12,000 pounds of thrust. These engines are better known for their use in the Northrop F-5 and the T-38. The XB-1 is 62.6 feet long and features a delta wing spreading out 21 feet.
Of course, the whole idea of this aircraft is to test out a lot of the tech that will be used in the Overture. It has an augmented reality vision system so that pilots can see past the long nose during takeoff and landing, thus eliminating the need for the Concorde’s “droop snoot.”
The aircraft also benefits from aerodynamics crafted from computational fluid dynamics, a fuselage packing tons of carbon fiber, and engine intakes designed to slow supersonic air to subsonic speeds as the aircraft flies. This is said to convert kinetic energy into pressure energy, allowing the XB-1 to fly using conventional engines rather than the specialized units found on the Concorde.
Boom has been taking the XB-1 into the Bell X-1 Supersonic Corridor (above), a long strip of airspace named after the X-1 rocket plane. Boom has been testing the XB-1 since its first flight and until now the XB-1’s top speed was Mach 0.95. On January 28, test pilot Tristan “Geppetto” Brandenburg took off from the Mojave Air & Space Port in California and into the history books when he piloted the XB-1 to 35,290 feet before racing to Mach 1.122 (652 KTAS / 750 mph).
January 28 marked the first time a civil jet built in America officially crossed the sound barrier. While Brandenburg’s accomplishment is still off of the mark from Boom’s goal of a Mach 1.7 cruising speed and a Mach 2.2 top speed, this is still nothing short of fantastic. Especially since every other modern attempt at supersonic transport hasn’t gotten this far.
Along for the ride was a Dassault Mirage F1 safety chase plane flown by A.J. “Face” McFarland and a Northrop T-38 Talon which took pictures of the ride. The whole flight, which included three runs down the supersonic corridor, took a touch over 30 minutes. That’s how wicked fast this thing is.
As for the sonic boom issue, Boom says its aircraft will benefit from the latest research in sonic boom reduction in the hopes of reducing the impact of sonic booms over the ocean. Still, a reduced sonic boom is still a sonic boom and that’s a problem for flying over land. Boom’s solution for flying over land is to cruise the Overture at Mach 0.94, which is still faster than your typical subsonic airliner’s cruise.
Likewise, the company says its engines will be a bit quieter than the ones on the Concorde and the company expects the Overture should be about as loud as the commercial aircraft flying today.
All of that is super ambitious and Boom has a long way to go. Just last year it completed a factory to build the Overture. There are still tons of test flights to go and the engineers also have to turn what they learned with the XB-1 into a larger aircraft designed to carry passengers. As of 2022, Boom said it was expecting to put the Overture into service in 2029. So, being charitable — and it’s not uncommon for a project like this to experience a delay — your next supersonic flight is still years away.
Of course, that all assumes Boom pulls it off and airlines can actually sell even remotely affordable tickets to fly on an Overture. It looks like Boom has the foundation, but can it be made to work financially, something the Concorde failed at? All of that remains to be seen. But at least for now, Boom has made one step closer to bringing the dream of supersonic travel back from the dead.
The Concorde was such a beautiful aircraft. The curves on the wings were so elegant, majestic even.
However, when the nose was lowered, it reminds me of the white spy in Mad Magazine’s Spy vs Spy artwork. The TU-144 did also. The Spy vs. Spy topic is another little internet rabbit hole in which one can spend/waste/enjoy a lot of time.
I just want a plane with sufficient legroom and shoulder room that won’t fall out of the sky due to an overworked/underfunded ATC or a random piece of FOD on the runway
I will wait for the final NTSB report (if that agency still exists in a year or two). From what I’ve read, the Army helicopter WAS in communication with ATC, as was, obviously, the CRJ. But I am not 100% certain.
I don’t know whether Black Hawks are equipped with TCAS. If not, they probably should be for flights within the US.
Anyway, it’s a tragedy and I am sad that a) it happened and 70 people died, and b) it’s already being politicized.
I’ve always found it curious how, in the US, Concorde is known as ‘the’ Concorde. Here in the UK there is no definite article – each example of Concorde is just Concorde, as if it were the one and only.
More pertinently, I look forward to following the progress of Boom, and the very pretty XB-1 which does have some visual similarities to the Fairey Delta which was used for Concorde development.
As to which, any Autopians who are ever in the south west of England and find themselves at a loose end could do worse than visit here:
https://www.nmrn.org.uk/visit-us/fleet-air-arm-museum/concorde-002
Which is conveniently just round the corner from here:
https://www.haynesmuseum.org/
The Haynes Motor Museum, of Haynes Manual fame.
Sorry I’ll shut up now.
Oh. Now I HAVE to go. I owned three (that I can remember) of their manuals. Datsun 510, Peugeot 504 and Saab 9000. I might have had one for my ’86 Accord, but I can’t remember. If I had it, I didn’t have to reference it, because nothing ever broke on that car.
Similarly, in the US, people are “taken to the hospital.” In the UK, Canada and Australia, they are “taken to hospital.” I’m not a linguist, so I don’t know how the definite article difference arose.
While there is much doubt that Boom can deliver an actual airliner, still this is pretty cool.
Point of fact Northrup produced the F5 as a private venture before it was ever sold, so Boom is not the first to produce a supersonic plane without gov’t funding.
“… high-speed aircraft flew above bad weather and delivered passengers to far-flung destinations exponentially faster than the propeller-driven aircraft of before.“
OK, allow me to be that guy. Jets are not EXPONENTIALLY faster. That would mean that the first generation of jets were a multiple factor faster than prop planes (ok, maybe true), then the second generation was about the same factor faster than the first jets, the third generation about the same factor faster as the second, and so on. In fact, a modern 787 cruises slightly slower than a 707 from 50 years ago, and that 707 made a little under twice the speed of a Connie.
I was hoping you’d write about this. I was a bit disappointed to see they’re just going to cruise below Mach 1 over land. I know there is active research around how to prevent sonic booms but I have no idea what the status of that is.
NASA and Lockheed are working on a low boom demonstrater with a stated goal of the boom being equivalent to a car door slam across the street, but it hasn’t flown yet. NASA also modified an F-5 into a low boom test article 20+ years ago, it looks like a baleen whale with its throat pouch full.
I am pretty sure, having followed Boom forever (even applied for a job there, but sadly didn’t get it), that they originally talked about low intensity sonic booms to fly over Mach 1 over land. Sad that isn’t the case anymore if I’m remembering correctly
A clean sheet commercial aircraft is ~$5billion to get certified. An engine is similar numbers. That’s before even getting to the supersonic complexities.
Developing a brand new engine for a brand new plane almost always ends in huge delays/overruns.
As an aviation enthusiast, I wish them luck. As a realist, there is no chance they make it to the finish line and certify a production model.
I have a relative who works for one of the “big three” aircraft turbine engine mfgrs and was involved with these guys for a bit. They were looking for an engine supplier who would be invested in the program via funding the development and tooling of a new engine and eventually making payback via production. The engine folks felt the business case had no chance because realistic production volumes were far too low.
And here I am swearing off cruise liners and flying for the rest of my life if I can avoid it, glad somebody’s gonna use all that fuel I’m saving, wouldn’t want it to go to waste.
Boom doesn’t have anywhere near enough money to make it happen at the moment. They raised $800 million over 10 years. It cost Airbus $1.3 billion to update the A320 into the A320neo, and it (initially) cost Boeing $3 billion to upgrade the 737 Next Generation into the 737 Max (ultimately cost them many times that to fix everything they botched, but that was the original plan), and Airbus is talking about another $4 billion for the next phase of updates to the A320, primarily a new carbon composite wing.
Boom is proposing a totally new supersonic airliner, completely unrelated to, and radically different from, anything in production, and they intended to design and build their own engines entirely in house. I would say it’s likely to require a few multiples of what updating an existing conventional airliner with someone else’s engines runs to
I’m going to guess that they know that and the point is to prove they are serious and are making it work so they can get the rest of the money to get past the finish line from investors.
It’s true that everything commercial aviation is incredibly expensive and complicated, but it’s also true that the two incumbents left are giant, slow moving behemoths and more efficient early development is doable for a fraction of what they would spend.
I’m going to disagree, precision manufacturing costs what it costs, lightweight/high strength heat tolerant alloys, composites, and adhesives cost what they cost, engineers cost what they cost, regulatory and certification expenses cost what they cost. You’re not going to deliver a 21st century Concorde for what could be a rounding error in Airbus’ quarterly results
If they were at more like $8-$10 billion raised, I’d be optimistic. But, I also don’t really see how a tiny demonstrator aircraft that has nothing in common design-wise with the airliner they intend to build is going to convince investors to pony up many billions of dollars, when they’ve averaged less than $100 million a year in fundraising since 2014, if everyone really believed it was a viable idea, they’d already be funded
The last two regarding engineers and certification I would agree with, but the past few years have seen huge leaps in manufacturing for high tech aero products. There are a number of new alloys and composites that are just now hitting commercial use that are both higher performance and cheaper to work with than the older ones they are replacing, and widespread 6-axis CNC and high performance 3D printing is leading to some mind boggling advances. SpaceX is a fantastic example of this- they are stealing absolutely everyone’s lunch money because it costs them literally 1/10th the cost of legacy manufacturers for their rockets (ie- it was originally going to cost somewhere around $1.6 billion to launch the Europa Clipper on the SLS when it was finally ready, SpaceX did it for $178 million on a Falcon 9 Heavy instead).
Nah, just put Elon on it. Full Self Flying by 2026!
On a semi-related note, I got the Lego Concorde for Christmas and it’s the coolest Lego set I’ve ever put together. And they did a really nice job with it.
I saw the Concorde do fly-bys several times in Oshkosh in the mid-80’s. It’s an awe-inspiring sight (with the noise to match). Nothwithstanding all the comments here about the carbon footprint, efficiency, etc, I think if they can make this thing fly, it will fly, and they will be able to sell tickets on it at nearly any price, because people will do it simply because they can. I’d buy a ticket just to be able to say I did it, even though supposedly you have no sense of the speed when onboard. My grandparents did all kinds of international travel in the 70’s (on the company’s dime) and their one regret was they never spent the extra coin to fly Concorde just once (to say they did).
My dad and I went to one of those Oshkosh shows when I was a kid. There was an opportunity to fly as a passenger on Concorde, albeit not supersonic obviously. Those tickets weren’t cheap, but it was the cheapest way you’d ever get to ride in that plane.
To this day, Dad says one of his biggest regrets was not ponying up for those tickets. Which reminds me, I need to make sure I get on a Ford Tri-motor to Put-In-Bay before those are retired.
Sell it to Muskrat to add to his collection of things that go boom.
The problem with this venture is who will supply the engines for the full scale aircraft. There are only 3 manufacturers capable of building the type of jet engines required and they have all declined to develop one. MS Teams solved the problem a few years ago
They claim to be developing their own, which would be very exciting to see.
The estimated development cost of the Pratt & Whitney F100 engine (which is comparable) is $1B. Without a lucrative government defense budget it is just not economically feasible.
Yeah, that’s only $200 million more than Boom has raised over the course of the company’s entire existence, and they also need to develop the plane to install the engines on. And build the factory to build the engines
“MS Teams solved the problem a few years ago.”
No need to Boom when you can Zoom.
There are still plenty of occasions where a virtual meeting just won’t do the job. Especially when vast sums of money are involved.
Even in my job, the cost to get me somewhere for a week is not even rounding error on the cost of the projects that I do.
I really wish the technology push here were more towards “Most space and resource efficient aircraft” instead of “Fastest oligarch missile”. Move more volume for less energy. Get away from the “stick with wings” design and explore things like lifting bodies, blended wing-body designs, etc. I feel like I am doomed to disappointment, though, since the status quo takes so much work (money) to change, and there’s no incentive if the old model still generates adequate shareholder happiness.
Curious about what the carbon footprint per mile is with this. As drag increases with the square of velocity, my guess is it isn’t very good.
They’ve committed to using renewable fuels. We’ll see… a big grain of salt…but still, at least they are saying the right things.
A) You can use “renewable fuels” in regular aircraft too…. And on a per passenger per flight mile basis you will use less.
B) “Renewable fuels” are not “carbon-less fuels” unless the equivalent amount of carbon released in using it has been captured from the atmosphere in it’s production.
And here I thought the future was hopping on one of Elon’s Starship ICBMs and delivering a pizza (or a nuke) to other side of the planet in a half hour or so.
How about Pizza and a Nuke?
Your deep-dish will definitely not arrive cold.
My old man flew on the Concorde a bunch of times on GM’s dime. He thought it was “pretty neat” but remarked that the seats were a bit tight.
His all-time favorite airline was Lufthansa, if for nothing else, the stewardesses were funny to him. “You WILL be comfortable. We WILL make this certain.” (his impersonation in a German accent)
I’ve only dabbled in learning German, but the verbs for “Will”, “Must”, and “Should” are very nuanced both grammatically and culturally. And I’m far from a grammar Naz….er….stickler.
(In Robin Williams bee voice) Nice recovery.
I had a teacher who had flown on it a few times and said similar things. He also said the biggest problem with the speed was you’d arrive across the pond in the middle of the night with nothing open, so it didn’t really help you actually save time
Concorde seats are just economy seats that go real fast. Concorde is tiny on the inside and doesn’t have room for big fancy seats.
On the other hand you weren’t spending that much time on them.
Which is also kind of the case for most of the smaller private jets, yeah, everything’s covered in nice quality wood and leather, but you can’t stand up, you’re crowded elbow to elbow, and everyone else has to watch you take a poop because there’s no actual bathroom
I had to look this up because it has been a while since I worked in this space, and longer since I have been to Sun N’Fun, but, yes, it looks like some of the very light jets like the Cessna Mustang and the Eclipse Jets only have an “emergency toilet,” but these usually are flying missions less than two or three hours, so that probably works. Even within the very light jet category it looks like there are some nice options – the Phenom 100 basically has a lav at the back, and the turbo-prop PC-12 has an elegant convertible space behind the pilots and opposite the entry door that can be made fully private by pulling out some panels. The need for the lav does depend on the passenger set – I remember one pilot telling me one of his clients sometimes brought the kids, and even after telling them to go pee at the FBO they usually were using the lav before he got up to cruising altitude.
It’s a bummer that Gulfstream’s Quiet Spike never really panned out.
I love this idea…for supercritical transportation needs like human organs (or even doctors) or certain national security requirements, like maybe getting UN peacekeepers or negotiator in place.
For civilian use? We’re still sitting here arguing about corporate RTO policies, so to me it’s pretty obvious that the economic “time value” of in-person presence vs the costs — both financial and environmental — of physical travel is basically decided.
Any corporate exec who needs this convenience/cost tradeoff probably already has a corporate jet (owned or fractional) or flies commercial, all of it at Mach 0.85+. The additional few hours gained by going supersonic is a really big hurdle, IMO.
I could go on ranting without hard data, but my dad retired from a life in aviation and we’ve discussed this ad nauseum. It’s never going to be economically feasible. And even if they found a small cadre of oligarchs to share a really expensive flight with each other, the numbers will never be high enough to justify production. Business jets will stick around and technology will fill the gap for everything else.
Yeah it seems like tourism would need to be the primary use of this, not business travel anymore.
And that’s just a tough sell to families when the tickets are many thousands of dollars.
I hope there’s a way to scale the technology so supersonic travel over oceans becomes routine (who wouldn’t want to get to Australia in 8 hours instead of 15?) but I agree with you that at the moment this seems very risky.
Our nation’s most precious resource… our rich… must be convenienced at all costs.
What exactly is your complaint here?
That a private company, using private funds, is researching and developing a technology that might be used (at first) by the wealthy?
Your taxes aren’t paying for this, your life isn’t being inconvenienced in any way, and it seems like you’re just bitter that somewhere someone else might someday enjoy something you won’t.
“I can’t have everything, so no one else should have anything” is the mindset of a toddler.
-Source, have a two year old.
Petroleum turned into carbon is forever and opinion is slowly turning against people who use more than their share.
As opposed to all those environmentally-minded folks who currently travel across oceans on subsonic jets?
The fuel consumption of this might be somewhat worse than slower aircraft, but I hardly think it’s the tipping point. The company is at least claiming to be looking into renewable fuels.
You know you can use renewable fuels in regular jets too….
In addition to. I’m old enough to have witnessed the first round of public disillusionment with punching through the air at supersonic speeds while blowing through fuel by the ton (I think per-passenger mpg for the Concorde was 15), it’s basically an adventurist/vanity thing which (note) I am not fundamentally against, just call it what it is. All powered transportation available is a drain on the earth’s resources in one way or another, just choose your level.
My complaint is that this product, in use, will have a carbon footprint orders of magnitude greater than existing tech all to allow the ultra rich to be slightly less inconvenienced.
[citation needed]
No one who is “ultra rich” is flying on any kind of commercial jet.
“ Flying faster than the speed of sound is inherently energy-intensive, in part because supersonics use powerful, narrow engines to produce the high thrust needed to break the sound barrier. Due to this, supersonics burn an astonishing amount of fuel—between four and nine times more fuel per seat kilometer than subsonics (which account for all aircraft currently in commercial operation), according to an MIT report for NASA.”
https://www.climateworks.org/blog/supersonic-aircraft-bad-idea-for-climate/
Come on, man…. No one who ISN’T “ultra rich” is flying a supersonic jet. Who do you think they are making this for?
So less than one order of magnitude then?
The target price per ticket is comparable to business-class accommodations on existing jets.
I’ve been flown trans-Atlantic in business class before by a former employer. I’ll be delighted to tell my wife that we are now considered “ultra rich”. No private jet necessary!
Fair point. Instead of “order of magnitude” I should have used “multiple”.
I find their target ticket to be an interesting. I have read that the Concorde was 30% more than International First Class (not business class). And the Concorde was a commercial failure.
So I’m not sure how charging less for tickets using much more expensive “renewable” fuel is going to succeed where the Concorde failed.
I love a good populist quip as much as the next guy, but I think even the majority of the 1% would look at this and laugh. They’ll take the lie-flat seats and first-class meals over saving a couple hours on the flight. I think that’s a no-brainer. That’s why my whole counterargument was about business/political travel. It’s all about saving time; casual travelers aren’t as concerned with that.
In 2023, my wife and I flew to Zurich from Austin, TX (via Heathrow) on a British Airways Airbus A350 in business class. It was glorious but also gloriously expensive at around $8,000 round trip for the two of us. Despite the crazy expense of it, it was worth it to arrive relaxed and not feeling like a recently-liberated sardine. And this was around 14 hours door to door including 9.5 in the A350.
If I had the funds to do a similar trip again, I would not hesitate. If it was on a supersonic plane with similar accommodations at roughly the same price, I’d choose that, with the time savings being a nice bonus. And this is the customer base this is aiming at.
It’s worth noting that I am firmly middle class, a bit above the average in savings and income, but my wife and I do the occasional splurge.
Makes sense to me — check out the comment that ended up right above you, though — the odds of this being a similar price to regular business class are very good, but they’ll never give you that amount of luxury (size and cost constraints)…so leisure travelers will probably end up choosing comfort vs time.
I’m firmly in the camp, at least for 8-10 hour flights, that the flight just gets me where I’m going, I’ll save the money for the lodging or experiences. I can absolutely see it both ways, though. For now, I’m paying for 4 tickets, so we’ll splurge on checked bags and seat selection 🙂
I think Boom’s road to market is long a fraught with obstacles.
Thus far this is a smaller, slower Concord, and carries a per passenger-mile carbon footprint 3 to 7x standard air travel which is already frowned upon by growing numbers of people.
I expect they’ll end up alongside the other failed attempts. There isn’t enough need to get past the problems.
I’m not so sure that the people that would be flying on it would have too many frown lines, at least not about carbon footprints. Just saying.
Well, there is another factor, which is what their peers, employees, shareholders, and others might think. Reputational risk is more real than ever. Even in the Great Recession, I watched companies axe plans to put vinyl wraps on Hummers just for the message it might send. Frugality is still “cool” in most circles (some call it virtue signaling or whatever), but at the same time the world is enriching the ultra-wealthy at an accelerating rate. I guess it all depends on how insulated you are from public opinion.