Comment by wat10000
20 hours ago
Everyone thought SSTs were going to be the next big thing. Both the US and USSR had projects. The 747 got a hump so it could easily be converted to a freighter once it was made obsolete by supersonic passenger planes.
Despite two superpowers making the attempt, and plenty of time for more tries since then, Concorde is the only one that came even remotely close to something commercially viable.
I’m sure there’s a market for California to China in five hours. But is it enough to support a whole new type of aircraft? Fuel burn is going to be enormous. Maintenance on something so cutting edge will be extremely expensive. Tickets would probably cost more than a private room on a widebody.
You’re hinting at another huge part of the issue.
There are no economies of scale to be had here. If there are only a handful of plausible economically-profitable routes, all of the expenditures on R&D, testing, certification, and production facilities can only be amortized across a handful of aircraft.
Once you’ve built a dozen or two of them and a handful of extra engines and spare parts… what then? There’s no point in keeping the production lines open.
From an airline’s perspective, they have to now have an entire separate chain of employees (pilots, mechanics) dedicated to another airframe that barely makes up a fraction of their fleet. That’s a lot of overhead for two or three routes.
Those are some pretty big structural disadvantages that need to be overcome in order to make a boutique supersonic route appealing.
Scheduled service is not viable but there is a bountiful supply of billionaires willing to one up each other with lavish expenditures. Having the fastest class of private jet is worth something to them. This is what's going to be the market for Boom if they don't fold.
And currently we live in a vastly more unequal world ecomomically than when the Concorde and similar were developed, there is money to throw around