[remh]

Don't want to be a downer and I fly regularly myself, but I think right now Air Travel is limited by 1 thing: the supply of carbon neutral fuel.

A few weeks of war in Iran showed us the impact of reduced availability of oil. The rise in the number of amplitude of climate events show us that a lot of what we do is not sustainable.

[Grombobulous]

Is there a good estimation of how long the world has left of actual commercially viable oil that can be refined into jet fuel?

Even disregarding climate impact (which we shouldn’t) it seems like supersonic flight is just the wrong direction to be going in. If the commercial aviation industry is to survive beyond a century or two they probably need to find a different energy source for planes.

Also, it’s just not like the train to plane transition where passengers experienced 5-10x average speed improvements. The maximum amount of time you can save for a round trip flight is about a day. There’s just a limit to how much value that has. Business travelers can work on the plane, leisure travelers can just take another day off.

I mean, speaking of trains, flights sometimes gave a hard time competing with those, too. There are a lot of situations where going a little slower isn’t a problem.