4 ms·

How cool is that, hopefully will pressure Airbus into developing one too. So far they did silly concept vides only. I'm also quite worried about Airbus after w

by mrtksn 2y ago

How cool is that, hopefully will pressure Airbus into developing one too. So far they did silly concept vides only. I'm also quite worried about Airbus after winning against Boeing becoming complacent since Chinese or Russians are not even close.

belter 2y ago
How do you make this profitable?
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > How do you make this profitable? Selling it for more than it costs to build. Computer-based modelling, advances in our understanding of supersonic flight and sonic booms and a mature civil (and private) aviation industry make the profit case much more compelling than it was for the Concorde. (The real test will be in their engine.)
  - alex_duf 2y ago
    I assume the question was about the questionable economics of running a super-sonic airplane profitably. The Concorde was notorious for bleeding money. Maybe the premium aspect will be enough, given that we have a bigger and bigger chasm between rich and poor, or maybe the economics of running it won't compete against sub-sonic, lower fuel consumption planes.
    - ghaff 2y ago
      I'm skeptical. Trans-Pacific would be interesting for some because that's a long time in a plane even with lie-flat seating. But then you need a lot of range because once you have to refuel you've cut into your time advantage. NYC to London or Paris? Sure. But now you still need to find people willing and able to spend $5K+ each way. I'd like to do it but realistically I'm not going to.
      - senko 2y ago
        First class NY to Paris in a couple of weeks, one way, is ~$6k "best overall", with $10k for "fastest" (checked a random flight on Skyscanner).
        echoangle 2y ago
        And how many people are booking that for that price? Is that enough to build a dedicated service on?
        senko 2y ago
        I wouldn't know, tho I am sure there's a McKinsey deck somewhere that calculated this :)
        JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > First class NY to Paris in a couple of weeks, one way, is ~$6k "best overall", with $10k for "fastest" La Première will regularly go for $20k one way.
        ghaff 2y ago
        European airfares from the US can be really funky. I'm doing a trip in a couple months with a roundtrip for Heathrow and I'm actually taking the Eurostar back to London because returning directly from Paris was going to be so expensive. Open jaws in particular can be fairly OK or can be really expensive (as in my case).
      - fsloth 2y ago
        $10k transatlantic return hop. Add expedited immigration. Does not sound insane. First class tickets London-NY can be already in this price range. Not for everyone of course (certainly way out of my price range).
        ghaff 2y ago
        There's a market, just not sure how big. Business class works mostly because there's a big plane full of people paying for Economy (and maybe Economy Premium) and I suspect a lot of business is upgrades for flyers with a lot of status or mostly using miles. With e-entry (not sure how it will work with ETA now), I haven't waited long in London for immigration in ages. British Airways business class-only flights from the City airport have been off and on. Don't know their current status. I could afford business but it seems like a poor value relative to other things I could do other than maybe a co-pay with miles trans-Pacific.
    - reaperducer 2y ago
      The Concorde was notorious for bleeding money. I see this stated all the time on HN, yet there's a whole section at the top of this very comments thread where people are talking about how very profitable the Concorde was. One person quoted the line "There were times, in fact, when the seven aircraft in the fleet would contribute around 40 per cent of BA’s entire profits."
      - notahacker 2y ago
        The key point is that the seven aircraft (two of which they paid £1 for!) spent very few hours per week in the air, because whilst it was profitable on one transatlantic route at very high prices, it would have lost money on just about any other route or with more frequent operation. And to have a profitable airframe programme you need your customers to be able to operate more than a couple of routes. (the 40% figure is more an indication of BA's sometimes thin margins than massive unfulfilled potential)
      - wongarsu 2y ago
        My understanding is that it was profitable if you got the aircraft for free and already had pilots capable of flying them. If the Concorde had been an actual financial success they would have developed it further and made a successor. And if BA and Air France had thought that the Concorde would continue making them money they wouldn't have retired it after one tragic accident in 30 years of operation. The 737 Max is still being made after much worse.
      - alex_duf 2y ago
        If I recall correctly, that's one of the well documented places where I had understood the fact that the concorde wasn't profitable, and would more or less never by in its current context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFBvPue70l8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFBvPue70l8 Which isn't to say Boom may not succeed.
- TheRealPomax 2y ago
  By understanding that it'll take over a decade, maybe multiple decades, to break even (because it's not a tech company) and planning accordingly.
- mkoubaa 2y ago
  Could this thing take a polar route from New York to Hong Kong?
  - Full_Clark 2y ago
    That's over 8,000 miles. An aircraft with that kind of unrefueuled range could go pretty much anywhere from New York, except Australia, SE Asia, or the tips of Africa and India.
  - thombat 2y ago
    Planned range for the Boom Overture is 4900 miles, so only a little better than the 4500 miles of Concorde, which occasionally had to make a refueling stop going westward over the Atlantic. So it won't have the capability for transpolar or Trans-Pacific flights.
    - Schiendelman 2y ago
      Seattle to Tokyo is under 4800. If they serve that route I will never fly anything else.
crowcroft 2y ago
Airbus won't do anything until someone proves the economics of it make sense.
- drysine 2y ago
  Won't do things like A380?
  - tastyfreeze 2y ago
    More of the same but bigger? While it is a feat of engineering to make an aircraft the size of an A380 it is essentially the same design as every other commercial airliner, not revolutionary.
    - crowcroft 2y ago
      Super impressive, but I agree with this, it was an easier project to plot on a spreadsheet and forecast a path to profitability. Using current technology and looking back at the Concorde to make any predictions on supersonic passenger travel generates a spreadsheet with a lot of red on it.
      - tastyfreeze 2y ago
        If somebody wants to burn their time and money trying I am totally cool with it. If they succeed in their vision they will be handsomely rewarded and transport gets faster. If they fail they still tried to make the future more amazing.
        crowcroft 2y ago
        Hell yea brother
  - IndrekR 2y ago
    Without A380 there would be no A350 XWB.
ksec 2y ago
This is slightly off topic, but why cant we start rebuilding Concorde? Wouldn't it be much easier to rebuild using modern technology? And try to get Mach 3 over the Atlantic so London to New York could hopefully be under 3 hours including take off and landing.
- nradov 2y ago
  For Concorde the entire supply chain is long gone. A clean sheet design based around currently available parts would be cheaper than trying to resurrect an old design. As for speed, Mach 3 is really tough because of extreme airframe heating. Mach 2 is about the highest sustained speed an airplane can manage without using really exotic materials or active cooling.
- panick21_ 2y ago
  You are contradicting yourself. You can either a) rebuild the Concord or b) use modern technology. If you use modern technology, its not a Concord anymore. And you can't magically go Mach 3 just because you say its 'modern'. What existing engine can do that? And even if you had an engine, a Concord will not do that anyway. So really you are talking about developing a whole new plane. And that's gone cost 10-20 billion $ and including the engine like quite a bit more.
- Schiendelman 2y ago
  I think Boom is doing exactly what you propose. What you propose just doesn't look like you expect it to look.

by mrtksn 2y ago

belter 2y ago

How do you make this profitable?

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> How do you make this profitable? Selling it for more than it costs to build. Computer-based modelling, advances in our understanding of supersonic flight and sonic booms and a mature civil (and private) aviation industry make the profit case much more compelling than it was for the Concorde. (The real test will be in their engine.)
- alex_duf 2y ago
  I assume the question was about the questionable economics of running a super-sonic airplane profitably. The Concorde was notorious for bleeding money. Maybe the premium aspect will be enough, given that we have a bigger and bigger chasm between rich and poor, or maybe the economics of running it won't compete against sub-sonic, lower fuel consumption planes.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    I'm skeptical. Trans-Pacific would be interesting for some because that's a long time in a plane even with lie-flat seating. But then you need a lot of range because once you have to refuel you've cut into your time advantage. NYC to London or Paris? Sure. But now you still need to find people willing and able to spend $5K+ each way. I'd like to do it but realistically I'm not going to.
    - senko 2y ago
      First class NY to Paris in a couple of weeks, one way, is ~$6k "best overall", with $10k for "fastest" (checked a random flight on Skyscanner).
      - echoangle 2y ago
        And how many people are booking that for that price? Is that enough to build a dedicated service on?
        senko 2y ago
        I wouldn't know, tho I am sure there's a McKinsey deck somewhere that calculated this :)
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > First class NY to Paris in a couple of weeks, one way, is ~$6k "best overall", with $10k for "fastest" La Première will regularly go for $20k one way.
      - ghaff 2y ago
        European airfares from the US can be really funky. I'm doing a trip in a couple months with a roundtrip for Heathrow and I'm actually taking the Eurostar back to London because returning directly from Paris was going to be so expensive. Open jaws in particular can be fairly OK or can be really expensive (as in my case).
    - fsloth 2y ago
      $10k transatlantic return hop. Add expedited immigration. Does not sound insane. First class tickets London-NY can be already in this price range. Not for everyone of course (certainly way out of my price range).
      - ghaff 2y ago
        There's a market, just not sure how big. Business class works mostly because there's a big plane full of people paying for Economy (and maybe Economy Premium) and I suspect a lot of business is upgrades for flyers with a lot of status or mostly using miles. With e-entry (not sure how it will work with ETA now), I haven't waited long in London for immigration in ages. British Airways business class-only flights from the City airport have been off and on. Don't know their current status. I could afford business but it seems like a poor value relative to other things I could do other than maybe a co-pay with miles trans-Pacific.
  - reaperducer 2y ago
    The Concorde was notorious for bleeding money. I see this stated all the time on HN, yet there's a whole section at the top of this very comments thread where people are talking about how very profitable the Concorde was. One person quoted the line "There were times, in fact, when the seven aircraft in the fleet would contribute around 40 per cent of BA’s entire profits."
    - notahacker 2y ago
      The key point is that the seven aircraft (two of which they paid £1 for!) spent very few hours per week in the air, because whilst it was profitable on one transatlantic route at very high prices, it would have lost money on just about any other route or with more frequent operation. And to have a profitable airframe programme you need your customers to be able to operate more than a couple of routes. (the 40% figure is more an indication of BA's sometimes thin margins than massive unfulfilled potential)
    - wongarsu 2y ago
      My understanding is that it was profitable if you got the aircraft for free and already had pilots capable of flying them. If the Concorde had been an actual financial success they would have developed it further and made a successor. And if BA and Air France had thought that the Concorde would continue making them money they wouldn't have retired it after one tragic accident in 30 years of operation. The 737 Max is still being made after much worse.
    - alex_duf 2y ago
      If I recall correctly, that's one of the well documented places where I had understood the fact that the concorde wasn't profitable, and would more or less never by in its current context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFBvPue70l8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFBvPue70l8 Which isn't to say Boom may not succeed.
TheRealPomax 2y ago
By understanding that it'll take over a decade, maybe multiple decades, to break even (because it's not a tech company) and planning accordingly.
mkoubaa 2y ago
Could this thing take a polar route from New York to Hong Kong?
- Full_Clark 2y ago
  That's over 8,000 miles. An aircraft with that kind of unrefueuled range could go pretty much anywhere from New York, except Australia, SE Asia, or the tips of Africa and India.
- thombat 2y ago
  Planned range for the Boom Overture is 4900 miles, so only a little better than the 4500 miles of Concorde, which occasionally had to make a refueling stop going westward over the Atlantic. So it won't have the capability for transpolar or Trans-Pacific flights.
  - Schiendelman 2y ago
    Seattle to Tokyo is under 4800. If they serve that route I will never fly anything else.

crowcroft 2y ago

Airbus won't do anything until someone proves the economics of it make sense.

drysine 2y ago
Won't do things like A380?
- tastyfreeze 2y ago
  More of the same but bigger? While it is a feat of engineering to make an aircraft the size of an A380 it is essentially the same design as every other commercial airliner, not revolutionary.
  - crowcroft 2y ago
    Super impressive, but I agree with this, it was an easier project to plot on a spreadsheet and forecast a path to profitability. Using current technology and looking back at the Concorde to make any predictions on supersonic passenger travel generates a spreadsheet with a lot of red on it.
    - tastyfreeze 2y ago
      If somebody wants to burn their time and money trying I am totally cool with it. If they succeed in their vision they will be handsomely rewarded and transport gets faster. If they fail they still tried to make the future more amazing.
      - crowcroft 2y ago
        Hell yea brother
- IndrekR 2y ago
  Without A380 there would be no A350 XWB.

ksec 2y ago

This is slightly off topic, but why cant we start rebuilding Concorde? Wouldn't it be much easier to rebuild using modern technology? And try to get Mach 3 over the Atlantic so London to New York could hopefully be under 3 hours including take off and landing.

nradov 2y ago
For Concorde the entire supply chain is long gone. A clean sheet design based around currently available parts would be cheaper than trying to resurrect an old design. As for speed, Mach 3 is really tough because of extreme airframe heating. Mach 2 is about the highest sustained speed an airplane can manage without using really exotic materials or active cooling.
panick21_ 2y ago
You are contradicting yourself. You can either a) rebuild the Concord or b) use modern technology. If you use modern technology, its not a Concord anymore. And you can't magically go Mach 3 just because you say its 'modern'. What existing engine can do that? And even if you had an engine, a Concord will not do that anyway. So really you are talking about developing a whole new plane. And that's gone cost 10-20 billion $ and including the engine like quite a bit more.
Schiendelman 2y ago
I think Boom is doing exactly what you propose. What you propose just doesn't look like you expect it to look.