5 ms·

Strong FOMO settling in. Premium transatlantic routes routes like NYC-LHR are super important to the bottom line of the big legacy carriers. If one airline has

by JCM9 4y ago

Strong FOMO settling in. Premium transatlantic routes routes like NYC-LHR are super important to the bottom line of the big legacy carriers. If one airline has supersonic and others don’t that could be a huge blow to the others. Of course things didn’t work out that way with Concorde, which was not commercially successful and more of a spectacle than something founded in business fundamentals. But if Boom can make supersonic passenger travel economics work out it would certainly be hugely disruptive.

moffkalast 4y ago
Concorde also didn't work out for management reasons and generated most revenue right before retirement when they they finally lowered ticket prices and stopped flying them half empty like the absolute idiots they were.
- thematrixturtle 4y ago
  Really? I thought it was exactly the other way around: Concorde was initially underpriced, and only started making money once pricing was yanked up to what the market would bear.
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  Interesting, I had heard the opposite. BA did a survey of passengers and realized that most passengers had no idea how much the tickets were worth since their employers had purchased the tickets for them. They thought their employers paid more than they actually did, so BA realized that they could considerably increase prices without losing many customers. BA raised prices and finally started turning a profit on Concorde.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    As I recall Concorde was something like 30% over first class. Which was very expensive at the time.
    - bryanlarsen 4y ago
      The way I heard it was that prices were 30% over first class but passengers thought that prices were 3X the cost of first class. Worst of both worlds -- price sensitive travellers wouldn't even bother checking out Concorde as an option, and price insensitive travellers weren't paying as much as they were willing to pay.
- darrenf 4y ago
  Do you have a source for this? Like other folk who have replied, this is the opposite to my understanding, at least from the perspective of BA (I know nothing about AF). heritageconcorde.com[0] talk about almost 20 straight years of profitability: > Concorde earned £500 million for British Airways after tax profit, this was between a loss making 1982 and a highly profitable 2000 with just seven aircraft. The first profitable year was 1983 (£14 million) increasing to £54 million in 1987. BA had good and bad years, in 1992 they actually even made a small loss, but then quickly returned to profitability. Immediately before the crash the profit levels were running at nearly £60 million and could have returned had they kept flying. (Even the last 6 months of operation in 2003 netted £50 million profit). And: > With unprofitable routes mounting, Concorde was going through rough times in the early 1980s. At this point, British Airways made a move that potentially saved supersonic travel. In 1981, British Airways managing director Sir John King managed to purchase the Concorde fleet from the British Government outright for £16.5 million plus the first year’s profits. Following the purchase, British Airways increased fares, bringing Concorde routes closer to profitability. With the fleet now owned outright, British Airways added additional routes. [0] https://www.heritageconcorde.com/concorde--british-airways https://www.heritageconcorde.com/concorde--british-airways
  - mshook 4y ago
    For AF, my understanding (and my source actually worked that side of the business) is Concorde got profitable with special flights (aka people renting the plane to travel the world) not from just your regular scheduled flights. But keep in mind neither BA nor AF really paid for their fleet...
nradov 4y ago
LHR is capacity constrained right now so they don't have slots to add more flights. Hopefully the runway expansion will be finished by the time Boom airliners are actually in service.
- froidpink 4y ago
  That is some wishful thinking there
- cjrp 4y ago
  American would swap this in for a plane which is using an existing takeoff/landing slot. Heathrow is also passenger-capacity-constrained right now, but that's more to do with understaffing.
  - petesergeant 4y ago
    > American would swap this in for a plane which is using an existing takeoff/landing slot Have to be charging a great deal to the small number of passengers for it to be worth swapping in to a fully loaded 777 spot
    - cjrp 4y ago
      Very true; I think the Overture is meant to be 50-55 seats? If so that's basically just the First/Business cabin of an American 777-300. If each of those 55 seats are paying a premium on top of sub-sonic business class, maybe that's enough to "lose" the remaining ~240 seats. Edit: Apparently Overture is 65-88 seats depending on configuration.
    - qazxcvbnmlp 4y ago
      Move all the first pax to the boom aircraft and do all economy/premium economy in the 777 and you’d come out even in the number of seat miles available. You could also upgrade a couple of the 777-200 or 787 routes to a 777-300 to get more seat miles to offset those lost to loosing a slot to a smaller aircraft.
N1H1L 4y ago
United also has a deal with Boom, that was June this year. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57361193 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57361193
- hnburnsy 4y ago
  >Overture’s order book, including purchases and options from American Airlines, United Airlines, and Japan Airlines stands at 130 aircraft. Boom is working with Northrop Grumman for government and defense applications of Overture.
- alamortsubite 4y ago
  That deal was June of last year (2021). They've been advertising the upcoming service in-flight since last summer.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    There was also signage in O'Hare I think last time I passed through. Struck me as odd.
petesergeant 4y ago
> If one airline has supersonic and others don’t that could be a huge blow to the others I think it's going to come down to exactly how fast or slow this is, the price, and what the hard-product (eg the seats) are like. A modern First Class is a very, very comfortable way to travel, and other than the novelty value, I'd certainly rather spend 8 hours in lie-flat that 5 hours in a recliner. That'll also depend on the time-of-day of the flight -- worth saving the time perhaps if you're traveling East-to-West, but for West-to-East might as well just overnight it? Long story short, I think it'll have use-cases, but it's not like Concorde -- when Concorde launched, 1st Class over the Atlantic looked a lot like 1st Class inside the states now -- comfortable, but not somewhere you wanted to spend a lot of time
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  Modern International First is going the way of the dodo on many routes, because business is now more comfortable than first was in the past. Knowing this, Boom is allegedly targeting an equivalent cost per mile to a standard business class seat.
- tomaskafka 4y ago
  While I don't have the 1st class experience, I recently went overnight with a sleeping train, and was unlucky to find the slower 7 hour one already full, so I had to go with the faster one, which only let me sleep for 5 hours, leaving me a bit dazed at the train station at 5am. Sometimes speed isn't better :).
rad_gruchalski 4y ago
> big legacy carriers Who are the new “non-legacy” carriers in this setting?
robjan 4y ago
A few years ago BA specifically excluded the idea of supersonic travel because you can provide a much more comfortable sleeper service at a similar price while making more profit.
neither_color 4y ago
My personal hypothesis is that Asian and cross-Pacific traffic has grown considerably in the decades since Concorde was flying and I look forward to wealthy eastern markets keeping the supersonic market viable. If American and United don't figure it out I could see a gulf country carrier or Singapore Airlines making it work. I haven't looked into profitability yet but a quick look at the list of busiest routes shows that Asia dominates the list. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_passenger_air_routes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_passenger_air_...
- potatolicious 4y ago
  Agree that this would be important except that there's basically ~no work being done on supersonic trans-Pacific flight. Boom's design doesn't have the range to operate trans-Pacific, and AFAIK there has never been any supersonic passenger aircraft (built or designed) that has had the range to pull it off. I do agree though, LHR-JFK holds very little fascination for me. It's a relatively short flight with a lot of ground-side overhead time, so the benefits of Going Very Fast seem pretty minimal. The prospect of SFO-HND or LAX-ICN very fast though seems a lot more appealing.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Yeah. You can/could get JFK (or EWR) to LHR (or LCY) without a red eye. Not sure what routes exist these days though I've taken EWR to LHR in time for a late-ish dinner in the city quite a few times. It's a long day but even in Economy Plus seating, it's not much longer/less comfortable than flying coast to coast.
    - ksala_ 4y ago
      I flew DUB-NYC-SEA recently, and honestly DUB-NYC on an a320 was a lot more comfortable than NYC-SEA on a 737…
- kylehotchkiss 4y ago
  Boom would be lovely for LAX/SFO to Singapore if the range allowed it. That could take some of the higher end traffic away from middle eastern carriers to the region. I don't see it doing so well for the middle eastern markets, ultra long hauls on average spend a lot of time flying over land (minus the Australian flights) - for example, see LAX-DXB whose only water crossing is the arctic ocean, where supersonic might not be allowed for ice preservation purposes https://flightaware.com/live/flight/UAE216/history/20220815/2350Z/KLAX/OMDB https://flightaware.com/live/flight/UAE216/history/20220815/... , DXB-Tokyo which is almost entirely land: https://flightaware.com/live/flight/UAE318/history/20220815/2250Z/OMDB/RJAA https://flightaware.com/live/flight/UAE318/history/20220815/... , or DXB-Cape Town, which again is mostly over land: https://flightaware.com/live/flight/UAE772/history/20220816/0000Z/OMDB/FACT https://flightaware.com/live/flight/UAE772/history/20220816/...
ant6n 4y ago
> Optimized for speed, safety and sustainability I hope any airline that gets these gets punished by all the other customers for the environmental irresponsibility of pushing this gass gussling technology. Wow, you can blow through your whole annual carbon budget in only 4 hours!!

by JCM9 4y ago

moffkalast 4y ago

Concorde also didn't work out for management reasons and generated most revenue right before retirement when they they finally lowered ticket prices and stopped flying them half empty like the absolute idiots they were.

thematrixturtle 4y ago
Really? I thought it was exactly the other way around: Concorde was initially underpriced, and only started making money once pricing was yanked up to what the market would bear.
bryanlarsen 4y ago
Interesting, I had heard the opposite. BA did a survey of passengers and realized that most passengers had no idea how much the tickets were worth since their employers had purchased the tickets for them. They thought their employers paid more than they actually did, so BA realized that they could considerably increase prices without losing many customers. BA raised prices and finally started turning a profit on Concorde.
- ghaff 4y ago
  As I recall Concorde was something like 30% over first class. Which was very expensive at the time.
  - bryanlarsen 4y ago
    The way I heard it was that prices were 30% over first class but passengers thought that prices were 3X the cost of first class. Worst of both worlds -- price sensitive travellers wouldn't even bother checking out Concorde as an option, and price insensitive travellers weren't paying as much as they were willing to pay.
darrenf 4y ago
Do you have a source for this? Like other folk who have replied, this is the opposite to my understanding, at least from the perspective of BA (I know nothing about AF). heritageconcorde.com[0] talk about almost 20 straight years of profitability: > Concorde earned £500 million for British Airways after tax profit, this was between a loss making 1982 and a highly profitable 2000 with just seven aircraft. The first profitable year was 1983 (£14 million) increasing to £54 million in 1987. BA had good and bad years, in 1992 they actually even made a small loss, but then quickly returned to profitability. Immediately before the crash the profit levels were running at nearly £60 million and could have returned had they kept flying. (Even the last 6 months of operation in 2003 netted £50 million profit). And: > With unprofitable routes mounting, Concorde was going through rough times in the early 1980s. At this point, British Airways made a move that potentially saved supersonic travel. In 1981, British Airways managing director Sir John King managed to purchase the Concorde fleet from the British Government outright for £16.5 million plus the first year’s profits. Following the purchase, British Airways increased fares, bringing Concorde routes closer to profitability. With the fleet now owned outright, British Airways added additional routes. [0] https://www.heritageconcorde.com/concorde--british-airways https://www.heritageconcorde.com/concorde--british-airways
- mshook 4y ago
  For AF, my understanding (and my source actually worked that side of the business) is Concorde got profitable with special flights (aka people renting the plane to travel the world) not from just your regular scheduled flights. But keep in mind neither BA nor AF really paid for their fleet...

nradov 4y ago

LHR is capacity constrained right now so they don't have slots to add more flights. Hopefully the runway expansion will be finished by the time Boom airliners are actually in service.

froidpink 4y ago
That is some wishful thinking there
cjrp 4y ago
American would swap this in for a plane which is using an existing takeoff/landing slot. Heathrow is also passenger-capacity-constrained right now, but that's more to do with understaffing.
- petesergeant 4y ago
  > American would swap this in for a plane which is using an existing takeoff/landing slot Have to be charging a great deal to the small number of passengers for it to be worth swapping in to a fully loaded 777 spot
  - cjrp 4y ago
    Very true; I think the Overture is meant to be 50-55 seats? If so that's basically just the First/Business cabin of an American 777-300. If each of those 55 seats are paying a premium on top of sub-sonic business class, maybe that's enough to "lose" the remaining ~240 seats. Edit: Apparently Overture is 65-88 seats depending on configuration.
  - qazxcvbnmlp 4y ago
    Move all the first pax to the boom aircraft and do all economy/premium economy in the 777 and you’d come out even in the number of seat miles available. You could also upgrade a couple of the 777-200 or 787 routes to a 777-300 to get more seat miles to offset those lost to loosing a slot to a smaller aircraft.

N1H1L 4y ago

United also has a deal with Boom, that was June this year. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57361193 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57361193

hnburnsy 4y ago
>Overture’s order book, including purchases and options from American Airlines, United Airlines, and Japan Airlines stands at 130 aircraft. Boom is working with Northrop Grumman for government and defense applications of Overture.
alamortsubite 4y ago
That deal was June of last year (2021). They've been advertising the upcoming service in-flight since last summer.
- ghaff 4y ago
  There was also signage in O'Hare I think last time I passed through. Struck me as odd.

petesergeant 4y ago

> If one airline has supersonic and others don’t that could be a huge blow to the others I think it's going to come down to exactly how fast or slow this is, the price, and what the hard-product (eg the seats) are like. A modern First Class is a very, very comfortable way to travel, and other than the novelty value, I'd certainly rather spend 8 hours in lie-flat that 5 hours in a recliner. That'll also depend on the time-of-day of the flight -- worth saving the time perhaps if you're traveling East-to-West, but for West-to-East might as well just overnight it? Long story short, I think it'll have use-cases, but it's not like Concorde -- when Concorde launched, 1st Class over the Atlantic looked a lot like 1st Class inside the states now -- comfortable, but not somewhere you wanted to spend a lot of time

bobthepanda 4y ago
Modern International First is going the way of the dodo on many routes, because business is now more comfortable than first was in the past. Knowing this, Boom is allegedly targeting an equivalent cost per mile to a standard business class seat.
tomaskafka 4y ago
While I don't have the 1st class experience, I recently went overnight with a sleeping train, and was unlucky to find the slower 7 hour one already full, so I had to go with the faster one, which only let me sleep for 5 hours, leaving me a bit dazed at the train station at 5am. Sometimes speed isn't better :).

rad_gruchalski 4y ago

> big legacy carriers Who are the new “non-legacy” carriers in this setting?

robjan 4y ago

A few years ago BA specifically excluded the idea of supersonic travel because you can provide a much more comfortable sleeper service at a similar price while making more profit.

neither_color 4y ago

My personal hypothesis is that Asian and cross-Pacific traffic has grown considerably in the decades since Concorde was flying and I look forward to wealthy eastern markets keeping the supersonic market viable. If American and United don't figure it out I could see a gulf country carrier or Singapore Airlines making it work. I haven't looked into profitability yet but a quick look at the list of busiest routes shows that Asia dominates the list. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_passenger_air_routes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_passenger_air_...

potatolicious 4y ago
Agree that this would be important except that there's basically ~no work being done on supersonic trans-Pacific flight. Boom's design doesn't have the range to operate trans-Pacific, and AFAIK there has never been any supersonic passenger aircraft (built or designed) that has had the range to pull it off. I do agree though, LHR-JFK holds very little fascination for me. It's a relatively short flight with a lot of ground-side overhead time, so the benefits of Going Very Fast seem pretty minimal. The prospect of SFO-HND or LAX-ICN very fast though seems a lot more appealing.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Yeah. You can/could get JFK (or EWR) to LHR (or LCY) without a red eye. Not sure what routes exist these days though I've taken EWR to LHR in time for a late-ish dinner in the city quite a few times. It's a long day but even in Economy Plus seating, it's not much longer/less comfortable than flying coast to coast.
  - ksala_ 4y ago
    I flew DUB-NYC-SEA recently, and honestly DUB-NYC on an a320 was a lot more comfortable than NYC-SEA on a 737…
kylehotchkiss 4y ago
Boom would be lovely for LAX/SFO to Singapore if the range allowed it. That could take some of the higher end traffic away from middle eastern carriers to the region. I don't see it doing so well for the middle eastern markets, ultra long hauls on average spend a lot of time flying over land (minus the Australian flights) - for example, see LAX-DXB whose only water crossing is the arctic ocean, where supersonic might not be allowed for ice preservation purposes https://flightaware.com/live/flight/UAE216/history/20220815/2350Z/KLAX/OMDB https://flightaware.com/live/flight/UAE216/history/20220815/... , DXB-Tokyo which is almost entirely land: https://flightaware.com/live/flight/UAE318/history/20220815/2250Z/OMDB/RJAA https://flightaware.com/live/flight/UAE318/history/20220815/... , or DXB-Cape Town, which again is mostly over land: https://flightaware.com/live/flight/UAE772/history/20220816/0000Z/OMDB/FACT https://flightaware.com/live/flight/UAE772/history/20220816/...

ant6n 4y ago

> Optimized for speed, safety and sustainability I hope any airline that gets these gets punished by all the other customers for the environmental irresponsibility of pushing this gass gussling technology. Wow, you can blow through your whole annual carbon budget in only 4 hours!!