Comment by citizenpaul

6 months ago

Was the problem that supersonic flight was expensive and the amount of customers willing to pay the price was even lower than the number of customers that could even if they wanted to?

3 comments

citizenpaul

reddit_clone 6 months ago

From what I had read in passing and remember.

  - They were loud (sonic booms were nasty).

  - They were expensive to maintain and operate. Guzzlers. (Britain and France clung to them as a matter of pride/ego)

  - They were narrow and uncomfortable. I have seen videos where there is space only for one stewardess to walk. I had been inside of one in Seattle museum. Very cramped.

  - As you mentioned, ticket cost was high.

  - I suspect people traveled in these mostly for bragging rights.

wrs 6 months ago

You made this point in passing, but it's so relevant to LLMs I wanted to highlight it: The development and operational cost was heavily subsidized by the British and French governments, because having an SST was a point of national prestige.

habinero 6 months ago

Yeah, basically. Nobody wanted to pay $12,000 to be in a plane for three hours when they could pay ~$1200 to be in one for six hours. Plus, they used up a lot of fuel. That made them real vulnerable to oil price spikes.

Contrast that with modern widebody jets, which fly ~300 people plus paid cargo on much more fuel-efficient engines.