[ghaff]

The transPacific and Pac Rim routes do seem interesting if the range is there. For a lot of those routes even flying in comfort on an A380 or 787 is still just a long time to be mostly sitting down even if the food is great and you can sleep in relative comfort. And they're routes that a lot of executives and other highly-paid business people routinely drop >$5K on today. At least from my perspective, it's a lot more interesting than US East Coast to Europe where the flights are short enough that it's not that big a deal so long as you're comfortable.

I have no idea about the economics or practicality of this particular effort. But one place I agree with the criticism of the criticism is that I do think it's silly to operate from a premise that supersonic commercial flight will never make sense. In fact, it seems almost obvious that it will some day even if it takes a long time.