[justmedep]

Concord was actually a cash cow for all airlines who had them. The only reason why airlines stopped using Concord was because of the crash and the inherent safety issues that were found. But the actual business model worked - limited in scope but it was highly profitable.

“That said, the airlines that flew the Concorde did make a profit. Concorde was only ever purchased by two airlines: BA and Air France. While the concept of the Concorde might not have been a worldwide hit, it was certainly a good market fit for these two airlines at the time.”

Overall it was obviously a money looser because of the high development costs (paid for by the governments).

[anovikov]

It worked because not just the development costs were paid for by the government, but acquisition costs were, too. Planes were given to the airlines for free, completely paid for by the states.

Also, only be BA made good profit on it and only after mid-1980s. Air France could barely break even.

If not the PR effect that put those airlines above all others as the only ones flying supersonically, they'd never make any sense to either of them.

These days, they'd certainly not be viable as private planes are now much more available and much cheaper than they used to be back in the day and these save a lot more time than supersonic flights. BA fare for LHR-JFK roundtrip was 10K pounds back in 2000, $15.2K at the average exchange rate, that's $28K inflation adjusted! Who'd pay that kind of money today for a commercial flight?

[Jakob]

Not taking away from your point, just for comparison:

A British Airways first class LHR-JFK roundtrip is $10K today for an 8h flight. Supersonic would be 3h.

[throwaway2037]

Is Boom aiming to be faster than the Concorde? I don't think so.

Their website says:

    > Overture will carry 64-80 passengers at Mach 1.7

Concorde flew NYC<->LON in 3.5 hours. I guess Boom will fly the route in about 4 hours. Also, regular commercial flights on NYC<->LON are currently 7 hours.

Also, using Google Flights, I priced LHR<->JFK on first class about T+1month for 7 days (Mon->Mon). It is about 5.3K USD round trip. I am surprised that it is so cheap. I guess that route is very competitive.

I don't understand the excitement on HN about Boom. The market is tiny. This is a terrible investment. What is the global demand for this aeroplane (if they ever build it)? Maybe... max 200. Look at the order book from the 1960s when the Concorde first flew. Less than 100 total orders. Are people forgetting about how incredibly loud is a sonic boom? It is unlikely that it will get rights to fly over land, just like the Concorde. Also, it is terrible for the environment. The Concorde burned fuel (passenger miles per liter) at roughly twice the rate of non-supersonic aeroplanes.

(Various edits.)

[michaelt]

> Are people forgetting about how incredibly loud is a sonic boom? It is unlikely that it will get rights to fly over land, just like the Concorde.

Remember a few years back when the Canadian-made Bombardier C-Series was selling well, so Boeing got their allies in the US government to impose a 300% tax on them as an "America First" policy?

Well, the rules around sonic booms were similar. Were there sonic booms? Sure. But the real reason for the ban was that they were foreign-made sonic booms.

Now the world's only supersonic passenger plane is being made in America, you might find Congress is much less worried about sonic booms.

[mrguyorama]

>But the real reason for the ban was that they were foreign-made sonic booms.

You are wrong.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_sonic_boom_tests

This was done to prepare people and gauge the reaction to BOEING sonic booms, for the SST. Everything about a supersonic future was scuttled when it became obvious that people clearly suffered when planes flew supersonic above them.

Keep in mind that the US Air Force still does not go supersonic over populated areas except when absolutely necessary, like during 9/11.

This study mind you was done with SCHEDULED sonic booms. Now imagine, instead of being able to set your clock to a loud, disruptive noise and plan around it, you must deal with completely unpredictable and variable EXPLOSION of sharp noise (130ish decibels is standing 100m from a jumbo jet as it spools up or a trumpet being blasted directly into your ear from a couple feet away)

People already hate the noise of cities when that noise is an occasional quiet siren heard from a mile away a few times a day. Imagine instead if the noise was completely unpredictable explosions. Also imagine you can't move out of the city to get away from it, because the sound blankets an entire flight corridor.

Unless NASA finds a way to magically evaporate all the energy in a sonic boom such that it makes almost no noise at ground level, we would have to literally depopulate mile wide corridors of the US just so a bunch of stupidly rich people can get from NY to LA in an hour? Nah

[InTheArena]

This isn't true. The backlash to sonic booms grew well before Concorde and was part of why the US government canceled its support of the SST program. Boeing canceled their part of the 2707 because of the (extremely) unexpected success of the 747 program (a larger plane slower addressed a larger market) and the 737 success.

Sources:

Joe Sutter, Creating the worlds first Boeing Jumbo Jet

Thomas Petzinger, Hard Landing

[myrmidon]

Sure, being a domestic enterprise might help here, but you will have to deal with regulations abroad, too (and Concorde had arguably the edge there because it had both London and continental Europe as home court).

I'm also fairly sure that softening/undermining noise regulations in general has become harder (less tech enthusiasm, more NIMBYism, especially in Europe).

[WalterBright]

> Are people forgetting about how incredibly loud is a sonic boom?

Is it? I lived in Kansas in the 1960s. Sonic booms from the AF base were common. They weren't that loud. Electric storms (a regular in Kansas) were considerably louder.

> The Concorde burned fuel (passenger miles per liter) at roughly twice the rate of non-supersonic aeroplanes.

5-7 times as much.

My dad said when he pushed his jet supersonic, you could watch the gas gauge unwind.

[Toutouxc]

> My dad said when he pushed his jet supersonic, you could watch the gas gauge unwind.

Did your dad fly military jets? Most older jets can't supercruise, i.e. go supersonic without using afterburners, and afterburners consume unholy amounts of fuel. Concorde did consume quite a lot of fuel per passenger mile, but it could supercruise.

[WalterBright]

Yup, military fighters.

[barney54]

Also, sonic booms are awesome. I don’t know that I want to hear them every 15 minutes, but they are cool.

[InTheArena]

The one new factor is the route fragmentation that occurred over the Atlantic with the 757 and 767 and the fragmentation that occurred over the Pacific with the 777 and 787. These changed from a model where only hub to hub flights where every seat had to be sold to be viable from a financial point of view to enabling many city pairs to work, and airlines still to make a profit, even if the business class seats are not fully sold. This led to a much larger market, which plenty of room for 3-10k "business class" tickets on these flights.

If boom can hit that same number, they will have success out of the USA <-> Europe market and premium intra-asia flights - the two most profitable route systems in the world.

[avn2109]

You should write more about this on a blog or something, it's interesting and you seem knowledgeable.

[anovikov]

They claim they have sonic boom solved by modifying the airframe shape. Otherwise, i agree with you. It will be a thing of no real consequence just like the original Concorde.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

> Are people forgetting about how incredibly loud is a sonic boom?

One of the unique selling points of their proposed aircraft is that it won't be so loud:

> Boom says Overture will be a lot quieter than Concorde and the supersonic military aircraft that were flying at the time the FAA ban

https://www.freethink.com/energy/boom-supersonic-flight

[mrguyorama]

That's a claim without evidence. A sonic boom is a direct outcome of moving through the air faster than the air can move through itself.

How have they demonstrated that they know how to cause quieter sonic booms?

[SideburnsOfDoom]

Revisiting this, does this count as evidence? I see it as at least 1 data point

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42999735

https://boomsupersonic.com/boomless-cruise

[SideburnsOfDoom]

Firstly, my claim that they say this is evidenced by the link. I did not assert it as historic fact that this thing works, just that this is what they say. The words "Selling point" and "proposed" are in that sentence for a reason: it's not actual yet. But if you think it's a deliberate fraud, then say so.

Secondly: Although the final proof of it is in the full scale aircraft for sure, a lot can be done with software modelling (1) and wind tunnels these days. And with the scale model that just flew, to be followed by "checking the actual performance that was demonstrated against what our models predicted, and how we expected it to fly." (2)

Thirdly, I point you to other "quieter supersonic" aircraft work in progress, the X-59. Some of their evidence-gathering process is detailed at the Wikipedia link, "development" section. (3)

It will be interesting to see how these work out; but if they do not, then it's a failure of modelling and design, not because they missed the directly obvious. But if you are an aerospace engineer and know more about this subfield, then say so.

1) "Boom has perfected its aircraft’s efficient, aerodynamic design using computational fluid dynamics, which “is basically a digital wind tunnel"."

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/28/travel/boom-supersonic-fi...

2) https://www.livescience.com/technology/engineering/boom-supe...

3) https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/x-59-quiet-sup...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_X-59_Quesst

[nautilius]

A sonic boom is not necessary when moving faster than sound, the Busemann biplane resolves that completely.

There's been considerable work on sonic boom mitigation for many decades. Boom's long nose, flat underside, top engine, small wingspan delta wings are all designs expected to mitigate a sonic boom. Let's see if it works in practice.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

> Concorde flew NYC<->LON in 3.5 hours. I guess Boom will fly the route in about 4 hours.

I feel that you're getting diminishing returns at the point of reducing 4 hours to 3h30, given that flight time is just a part of the whole "door to door" time, there are several hours at least that aren't flight time, and that the expensive tickets all come with an hour or three in an airport lounge.

[nukeman]

I think the real advantage would be for transpacific flights. San Francisco to Tokyo is currently about 11.5 hours, assuming a similar ratio (maybe slightly better due to flying supersonic for longer), Boom’s time would be around 6.5 to 7 hours. Savings would be more significant for East Coast flights, ATL-HND would go from 14.5 hours to under 8.5.

[throwaway2037]

East Coast US to Japan supersonic? This is the stuff of fantasy. With the insanely high fuel burn and very small aeroplane body size, where are you going to put all the fuel for a trans-Pacific flight? NYC<->LON was already nearly the limit for the Concorde. As I understand, they had high priority when landing due to low fuel.

[nukeman]

Interesting, I hadn’t realized the range was so short. I guess if they did trans-Pacific it would mostly be limited to Seattle to Tokyo, or routes with a stopover in Hawaii.

[WalterBright]

> Who'd pay that kind of money today for a commercial flight?

Government people. I remember Kissinger flying on it.

A first class ticket on the Titanic would be $50,000 today.

[michaelt]

The problem with $50,000 tickets is a higher price means fewer customers, and at a certain point that means less money coming in overall, worse economies of scale, and less ability to cover your upfront engineering costs.

The Toyota Camry is a $30,000 car that sells 300,000 units per year. The Lamborghini Huracan is a $300,000 car that sells 600 units per year. Much easier to cover the costs of developing a reliable electrical system, or a new hybrid drivetrain, when you're Toyota.

Concorde couldn't repay its development costs for the same reason.

[ghaff]

In fairness, there's little practical benefit (and, in fact, a lot of downsides) to a supercar whereas a plane that does trans-oceanic in half the time is useful--of course, if you can build it, and sell tickets economically for maybe today's business class prices--keeping in mind that a lot of people flying business are doing so on upgrades/miles.

[engineer_22]

...and yet, despite your lamentations, Lamborghini operates a profitable business.

[zabzonk]

I used to work for a big 6 accountancy and audit firm. their senior partners used to fly concorde, wheras us underlings flew virgin upper class (like first class on other carriers).

[Telemakhos]

> Who'd pay that kind of money today for a commercial flight?

Nobody. That's part of Boom's plan: they want to make the Overture jet cheap enough to fly that tickets will cost about what business class costs on regular intercontinental flights. They're keeping the problems of the Concorde in mind as part of the design process.

[usrusr]

> Who'd pay that kind of money today for a commercial flight?

People willing to throw money at connecting with others who do the same thing. That was the main value proposition back then I think, getting from continent to continent in a short time has never been more than a tangential benefit. Of course this type of business only really works when everybody involved claims the opposite.

[anovikov]

Today these people hang out at private jet FBOs.