Originally Posted by TPJ

My experience with Concorde:

Back in 1997 (1998?) BA Sales Reps were virtually begging the Company I was then working for to accept this deal:

- LHR to JFK in C-class (‘Cradle Seats’ at that time)

- Return on Concorde

I recall they mentioned they have no problem to fill in the morning SSC flight to JFK.

Filling in the second SSC flight is more of challenge, but they somehow managed.

But loads on JFK-LHR flights were disastrous. Nobody wanted to travel the whole day (taking time zone change into consideration), when they could take an evening flight, eat, sleep (I was able to sleep in Cradle Seats – then one could only dream that one day there would be fully flat seats in J), arrive in the morning. This is why they could offer us a very good deal for returns on Concorde. We finally rejected the deal.

Would it be different today?

For a start, we have extremely comfortable fully flat seats and even in my age I have no issue to sleep on the plane and then go home, take shower and WFH for some time.

BA run the following SSC schedule in 90’s:

10.30 am LHR departure – 9.20 am JFK arrival

7.30 pm LHR departure – 5.50 pm JFK arrival

9.30 am JFK departure – 6.30 pm LHR arrival

1.45 pm JFK departure – 10.25 pm LHR arrival

Boom will be slower so these flight times will be longer. I cannot imagine they would be given the 10.25 pm LHR arrival slot as the aircraft would probably be too noisy. Let’s say they could land at 9.50 pm latest, the flight would be 30 minutes longer what means departure from JFK would have to be at 12.40. They will have the same issue as BA – not too many people interested in taking these flights.

So how about an overnight flight. In theory it would work:

10 pm departure – 7.10 am arrival

But for a start – who would fly in a Coach-like seat on an overnight flight, when they could choose a slightly longer flight (3 extra hours more is not a major tragedy) in a comfortable, fully flat seat?

Maybe there is more chance this might work for Asia or deep Latinoamerica, but I just do not think this operation might be profitable for TATL services.

Originally Posted by Ghoulish

Boom?

If there's ever an accident, the dark jokes will, unfortunately, write themselves.

Originally Posted by USA_flyer

They have orders and options for 206 units so several airlines are already invested in it flying. As for profitability, it's the TATL routes where it will be *most* profitable, there are people willing to pay for the time saved in the air.

Originally Posted by TPJ

If 206 small aircraft fly over the TATL, where would they find airport slots for them? The option of flying in Y and Y+ will be gone as only Boom aircraft will be flying? Could you imagine the noise from the environmentalist group if this number of supersonic aircraft operate? I like your optimism, but the numbers do not ad up...

Originally Posted by USA_flyer

They have orders and options for 206 units so several airlines are already invested in it flying. As for profitability, it's the TATL routes where it will be *most* profitable, there are people willing to pay for the time saved in the air.

Originally Posted by Ghoulish

Orders with no engines in sight...how does that work?

With no idea of flight characteristics, range, fuel consumption, maintenance, or even cost of the engines there are no "orders" in what most understand that term to mean.

Originally Posted by USA_flyer

Not being privy to the commercial agreements, I don't know what the terms of the deals are.

Originally Posted by Ghoulish

The 777 cost $5 billion in development prior to the first demonstrator being built.

A320 cost $2 billion to develop in the 1980's.

Excluding engine development costs.

Both entities with deep engineering resources and a library of patents building upon existing designs.

Boom has raised $270 million in total, from the "orders" and other entities. For a radically different, clean sheet design.

The undisclosed deposits are "non-refundable", which, coupled with the incredibly small amount of total money Boom has collected, sounds like Airlines are willing to toss away an advertising campaign's worth of money for the ability to say they're on the "supersonic" bandwagon.

The whole thing is very suspect, and the closer one looks into the details, the shakier it appears.

Originally Posted by Ghoulish

Orders with no engines in sight...how does that work?

With no idea of flight characteristics, range, fuel consumption, maintenance, or even cost of the engines there are no "orders" in what most understand that term to mean.

Originally Posted by LarryJ

It is expensive to do so and the time benefit is relatively small.

Boeing pitched the Sonic Cruiser concept to the airlines in 2001. It would have cruised as high as M0.98. Airlines preferred a more efficient, but slower, design which eventually became the 787 with it's M0.85 normal cruise speed.

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

Manufacturers can only build what their airline customers are willing to buy. That's why airlines are making small financial commitments to the Boom's Overture concept and proposed performance and economic targets.

Originally Posted by Ghoulish

Boeing has 56,000 full time engineering staff.

Boom has 150 total staff, including administration, accounting. HR, and Public Relations.

I think it's time to cash out my HyperLoop and Theranos profits, and go all in on this.

Originally Posted by Hoi polloi

While I understand the point you're making, doesn't Boeing seem more than a little bloated? While 150 certainly seems too small, 56k seems entirely too large for the amount of new designs coming out of Boeing over the last decade or two...? At some point, you've got too many cooks in the kitchen.

Originally Posted by Cat Man Do

Perfect. They'll charge twice as much because it's so much faster, and provide half as good service/product, because it's so much faster that passengers won't suffer for as long and can just deal with it.