alt Hacker NewsIt seems like there's not enough interrogation of how much time supersonic could actually save you. 3 hours of flying from LA to Seattle, 2.5 with climb and approach removed. If you cut it in half, 1h15m saved. On the flip side, how long does it take to get to the airport, park, though security, board, deboard, massive buffer time because flights are expensive and you don't know what might delay you, god forbid you have baggage to check and pick up. Flying at twice the speed might reduce the time to fly by less than 20%. Taking small on-demand supersonic flights from regional airports as suggested is definitely not a solution btw, because it's a pipe dream.
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It's for much longer distances.
There are flights between St Petersburg and Moscow. About 10 daily. It's about 1 hour. Together with everything you described, it's more like 4 hours. A high-speed train is also 4 hours. So the only people who choose to fly are those who have a connection or those who couldn't get a train ticket because those are always in high demand.
Seattle to Beijing is like 12+ hours now that Russian airspace is closed. There is a lot of time to save.
LA to Seattle is not worth it. The real gains are in London to NYC, or Tokyo to LA, or maybe Rio de Janeiro to Miami.
No one is flying supersonic over land at least in the US. Going over the oceans is where it would happen.
The one note about Astro Mechanica towards the middle is referring to long haul flights from smaller airfields because they'll have a smaller private jet sized plane. It was not referring to short haul flights, nor was the rest of the article.
I don't believe the economics for that will at all work out the way they are pitching, but it has no relation to how much supersonic makes sense for a domestic short haul.
He used 24 hour LA to Dubai as an example?
Why would you pick a 3 hour flight?
I am guessing this is really aimed at the 1%, who don't have to get to the airport 3 hours before a flight.
Rory Sutherland commented that, insteading of spending billions on high speed trains, why not spend a few million on making the experience nicer. Better carriages, more staff, nicer stations.
Being on the actual plane is the most uncomfortable part of the entire experience, for me at least.
Others may disagree, but I'd rather cut an hour from the flight than the entire commute/parking/security/airport waiting. (Assuming conditions on the actual plane were the same.)