Supersonic Flights to Hawaii?
 

While the UA / Boom announcement to introduce supersonic flight service by the end of the decade may simply be imaginative posturing not rooted in reality, I was wondering what is real about supersonic flights to/from Hawaii?

Before the Concorde crash, there was talk of supersonic charter flights from SFO to HNL that'd take about 2.5 hours to fly. In the 1990's, KOA was a stop on an around-the-world by Concorde trip that was sold in then-dollars around $55k. But other than these special flights, it doesn't look like anyone really considered supersonic flights to Hawaii. Considering most of the travel is over water (and the military often produces sonic booms in off-shore waters), why didn't supersonic travel ever take off in Hawaii?

And if the UA supersonic service does materialize, do you think UA would put one of the jets on a Hawaii route? Surely there's 88 people who'd be willing to pay top dollar for the trans-Pacific flight from both the U.S. West Coast and Tokyo.

Naw - some cetacean protection group will protest. Just wait.

David

Probably not enough business travel since Hawaii is a mostly leisure destination

Fine, but there's enough wealthy leisure travel to Hawaii to support this plane once or twice a day, I'd think.

Or at least a few times / week.

I dunno, is the crowd that is prepared to drop $5k for a flight to Hawai to save 2.5 - 3 hours that big?

Faster than flying private and comparably priced. KOA-LAX/SFO are among the most popular private jet routes around.

Right now I would prefer a combo passenger/freight aircraft to get me and my car to the islands!

Affordably?

David

Of course not. But travel today is all about ground transportation. Rental vehicles of all kinds are nearly unavailable in the islands and the prices are outrageous.
Some examples from our recent experience:

--Yesterday the yellow cab taxi we reserved to take us from the beach in LA to LAX was an hour late picking us up, even though the reservation was made 6 hours earlier and reconfirmed an hour before the pickup time. Yellow Cab volunteered $15 off the next yellow cab ride for our trouble.

--a 3 day rental at SMF is ~$450. It is far less expensive to park our car at the Sacramento airport and be gone for a month than renting a car there (as an aside, I was surprised to see that the Avis/Budget car lot nearly full last night when we picked up our last reasonably priced rental...the reservation made months ago).

--nephew ordered a Lyft to be taken from near downtown LA to LAX. The estimated time to pick up was 20 minutes. When the 20 minutes passed, Lyft estimated another 20 minutes for pickup. He cancelled and drove to LAX, parking at the expensive airport lot. Lot E, the economy lot, is closed at LAX.

Bottom line---> the old ways of ground transportation do not apply now. Plan accordingly.

West Coast - HNL isn't a huge amount of time savings, when you look at the total elapsed travel experience. And unless these new planes hold a lot more weight than the Concorde, the profit in Hawaii flying will have to be absorbed by extremely high fares, as the airlines probably make more carrying what's below the passenger cabin than in the passenger cabin. Also, you may recall that the Concorde was basically economy plus seating with luxury soft product. So unless these planes are substantially larger and can hold many more passengers and cargo than a Concorde did, I can't see this being more than a novelty on the route. Maybe 1x/day will get some decent business travel, but that would be about it.

I would do it once or twice (i.e. a round trip) just to say I've done it. But after that? Meh, probably not.

If more flights get the OK so that the a) people expect shorter flights and b) the price drops, then c) we'll see more supersonic planes. What would be even better is d) the aerodynamicists and aerospace engineers figure out how to muffle the supersonic booms and then e) these aircraft become ubiquitous.

But remember, some of our grandparents and parents (and perhaps some current FTers of an older generation) took flights that lasted a total of almost 24 hours to get to Hawaii from the East Coast:

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...46b031d44c.jpg

Or 9 hours from California to Hawaii:

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...0e4f5a4aeb.jpg

(Probably why Halfway to Hawaii was so important in its day...)

source: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/airl...t-ads-1950s/25

David

Still 4.5-5 hours from California. So in the last 70 years we've only cut the time in half?

I really don't see US West Coast to Hawaii being the ideal market for this. TPAC is another matter entirely. If I can cut a 12 hour flight down to 3, that's different than cutting a 5 hour flight down to 2.5. There's a lot of overhead associated with just taking off and landing and it becomes a much bigger part of the total as the routes get shorter.