alt Hacker News“ Blake’s pitch to airlines is enticing: “You’re already flying this route with a 300-seat plane where 80+ people in business class generate most of your profit. Give those passengers a supersonic plane, cut the flight time in half, and charge the same price.”
Replies
VLM • last Tuesday at 7:07 PM
Also by no longer providing service to non-business class customers they save a lot of money on personnel, services, logistics.
Of course the disadvantage, is no more air service for non-business class customers (that being most of us).
BigTTYGothGF • last Tuesday at 7:00 PM
It's been a while since I've flown. Are ~20% of seats really business class?
➕ show 1 reply
pandemic_region • last Tuesday at 7:20 PM
> Give those passengers a supersonic plane
Meaning a big price increase for us normal passengers?
The math doesn't scan out on that, it sounds good for pitches and articles but is kind of nonsense once you think about it imo. It's going to cost way more than just 2x to run the supersonic jet along the same route per flight just in fuel and maintenance and you're cutting out all the low fare passengers they cram in the back so they need to make up even more money than just the fuel costs and running additional flights per day doesn't address the issue because the cost per trip is increasing so running more trips just keeps incurring those same costs.