7 ms·

Is there any evidence airlines would pay for this? Pre-covid, the dominant trend over decades has been for cheaper, cheaper, cheaper flights. Hardly anyone pay

Is there any evidence airlines would pay for this? Pre-covid, the dominant trend over decades has been for cheaper, cheaper, cheaper flights. Hardly anyone pays for first class, but will they pay three to four times as much to arrive a few hours earlier?

vosper 6y ago
Not sure why you're getting downvoted, this seems like the crucial question. Even here in New Zealand we have experienced a huge tourism boom (pre-Covid) over the past 15 years. For most people getting here meant taking one or more really long-haul flights. It didn't seem to put a whole lot of people off: we had 3.7m tourist arrivals in 2017, without supersonic jets. Our population is only 5m. (On a personal level I hope there isn't a market of even more people who want to come here who'll be enabled by greatly shorter flight times. We had more than enough tourists already, TYVM. But economically, we won't be able to resist because jobs)
- jdminhbg 6y ago
  > It didn't seem to put a whole lot of people off: we had 3.7m tourist arrivals in 2017, without supersonic jets. Our population is only 5m. I think you might underestimate how many people would visit if the long-haul flights weren't an obstacle. Pre-covid Iceland, easily reachable from Europe and the NE US, had over 1M arrivals on a population of only 300k: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Iceland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Iceland
  - vosper 6y ago
    Iceland is a little bit more "on the way" than NZ is - it can be a stopping point on a trip to Europe or the US. But I think you must be right. If the trip becomes less burdensome more people will want to come. The obvious (to me) response is to set a target tourist number, and raise the arrival fee until we get approximately that number of tourists. But now we're getting into policy :)
levi-turner 6y ago
In the video (https://youtu.be/18x38IMAwrY?t=2201 https://youtu.be/18x38IMAwrY?t=2201) they have a blurb from the chairman of Japan Airlines, Yoshiharu Ueki. I have zero experience in this but a cursory Wikipedia dive shows them as being the 6th largest global airline by passengers. So it looks like they have at least _some_ commercial partnerships / relationships.
pedalpete 6y ago
They've had early interest from JAL and Virgin https://boomsupersonic.com/partners https://boomsupersonic.com/partners I doubt anyone would get this far without partners.
- new_realist 6y ago
  Virgin is bankrupt.
- swang720 6y ago
  Virgin sold their airline to Alaska Airlines.
  - pirocks 6y ago
    Virgin Atlantic wasn't sold to Alaskan airlines, only Virgin America.
nl 6y ago
Their competitor[1] has $2.4B in orders from Easyjet, so there seems to be demand for the concept. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerion_AS2#Orders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerion_AS2#Orders
- ForHackernews 6y ago
  Flexjet, not EasyJet. This is a businessjet, not an airliner.

vosper 6y ago

Not sure why you're getting downvoted, this seems like the crucial question. Even here in New Zealand we have experienced a huge tourism boom (pre-Covid) over the past 15 years. For most people getting here meant taking one or more really long-haul flights. It didn't seem to put a whole lot of people off: we had 3.7m tourist arrivals in 2017, without supersonic jets. Our population is only 5m. (On a personal level I hope there isn't a market of even more people who want to come here who'll be enabled by greatly shorter flight times. We had more than enough tourists already, TYVM. But economically, we won't be able to resist because jobs)

jdminhbg 6y ago
> It didn't seem to put a whole lot of people off: we had 3.7m tourist arrivals in 2017, without supersonic jets. Our population is only 5m. I think you might underestimate how many people would visit if the long-haul flights weren't an obstacle. Pre-covid Iceland, easily reachable from Europe and the NE US, had over 1M arrivals on a population of only 300k: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Iceland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Iceland
- vosper 6y ago
  Iceland is a little bit more "on the way" than NZ is - it can be a stopping point on a trip to Europe or the US. But I think you must be right. If the trip becomes less burdensome more people will want to come. The obvious (to me) response is to set a target tourist number, and raise the arrival fee until we get approximately that number of tourists. But now we're getting into policy :)

levi-turner 6y ago

In the video (https://youtu.be/18x38IMAwrY?t=2201 https://youtu.be/18x38IMAwrY?t=2201) they have a blurb from the chairman of Japan Airlines, Yoshiharu Ueki. I have zero experience in this but a cursory Wikipedia dive shows them as being the 6th largest global airline by passengers. So it looks like they have at least _some_ commercial partnerships / relationships.

pedalpete 6y ago

They've had early interest from JAL and Virgin https://boomsupersonic.com/partners https://boomsupersonic.com/partners I doubt anyone would get this far without partners.

new_realist 6y ago
Virgin is bankrupt.
swang720 6y ago
Virgin sold their airline to Alaska Airlines.
- pirocks 6y ago
  Virgin Atlantic wasn't sold to Alaskan airlines, only Virgin America.

nl 6y ago

Their competitor[1] has $2.4B in orders from Easyjet, so there seems to be demand for the concept. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerion_AS2#Orders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerion_AS2#Orders

ForHackernews 6y ago
Flexjet, not EasyJet. This is a businessjet, not an airliner.