Unfortunately not.

At Mach 1,0, the shock cone has apex angle of 180 degrees - it is a flat plane supported at the nose, and will not touch nose.

However, a big issue with sound barrier is backwards shift of the centre of lift. Concorde had to pump fuel backwards during acceleration to transonic. A subsonic airliner does not have such pumps. If it were to accelerate near the speed of sound, it would suffer a Mach tuck - as the centre of lift moves backwards, the plane drops nose and enters into dive, the elevator authority is not enough to raise nose, so the plane accelerates in a supersonic dive till it meets ground or is broken mid-air by excessive aerodynamic forces.

Basically, the drag (drag coefficient, C sub D, for the aerodynamic geeks among us) approximately triples as you go throught the speed of sound. Nobody will give an aircraft three times the power it needs otherwise unless going through the "sonic barrier" is a requirement. Once past it, it drops off again to about 50 percent higher than its subsonic value, so cruising at supersonic speeds is practical (though expensive, for a bunch of other reasons besides drag as well).

Ah right, I had forgot that part, about the cone opening angle being a function of v.

But interesting about the shifting center of lift!

Real supersonic (airspeed, not ground speed) has been done before in a 747. Coincidentally, also on the TPE-LAX route.
http://www.airliners.net/open.file?id=0067630&size=M

Glad I wasn't on that flight.:eek: :eek: :eek:

Scary, but funnily with very little harm done!

It is not known how many g-s the plane and passengers suffered, because the acceleration broke the acceleration sensors for the black box, but it was more than 5 g.

Out of over 270 passengers and crew, only two were injured - one crew and one passengers. Everyone else was completely unscathed.

I suppose when you are pulling >5 g's everyone pretty much remains in their seats whether they are wearing their seat belts or not.

Maybe there were few serious injuries to passengers but I bet their underpants were not so lucky.

I was one of the lucky ones at CO's Houston DO II that got to 'fly' the 777 flight sim. While in many ways it was no more difficult than driving a car, one of the things on my list that we never got to because everyone needed 2 shots a landing to succeed was to take it supersonic :(

My plan, if I could not pull out of a dive in a reasonable period of time was to do a mid-air engine reverse. It would have been interesting to see the result.

Maybe next time :)

FL33 is 3,300'. 33,000' is FL330.

FL's don't begin until FL180. There is no FL33.

Some allow GPS units, DL or CO, I can't remember exactly, plainly listed in the inflight mag.

I believe most ICAO countries use FL's at lower levels.

I was not aware of that. In the US it's only used above 18,000MSL. Also the altitude at which one sets the altimeter to 29.92... so in fact 18000' |= FL180 unless the actual altimeter reading is 29.92.

That's true in the United States but elsewhere the transition level varies significantly. But, that wasn't the point...

FL33 is how 3,300' would be written as a flight level. It is not 33,000' as the poster intended.

And they don't call them FL's, just 'F', as in F80.

I'm sure you are aware that a FL altitude is just a pressure level above some standard reference level of 29.92 inches. While the absolute altitude will vary w/ pressure changes, the relative part doesn't and todays instruments are very very precise. Witness the Gol and Embraer collision over Brazil.

I've used my GPS on loads of flights, including one at close to 700 MPH. Qantas was the only airline that has ever asked me to switch it off.