> If one airline has supersonic and others don’t that could be a huge blow to the others
I think it's going to come down to exactly how fast or slow this is, the price, and what the hard-product (eg the seats) are like. A modern First Class is a very, very comfortable way to travel, and other than the novelty value, I'd certainly rather spend 8 hours in lie-flat that 5 hours in a recliner. That'll also depend on the time-of-day of the flight -- worth saving the time perhaps if you're traveling East-to-West, but for West-to-East might as well just overnight it?
Long story short, I think it'll have use-cases, but it's not like Concorde -- when Concorde launched, 1st Class over the Atlantic looked a lot like 1st Class inside the states now -- comfortable, but not somewhere you wanted to spend a lot of time
While I don't have the 1st class experience, I recently went overnight with a sleeping train, and was unlucky to find the slower 7 hour one already full, so I had to go with the faster one, which only let me sleep for 5 hours, leaving me a bit dazed at the train station at 5am.
I think it's going to come down to exactly how fast or slow this is, the price, and what the hard-product (eg the seats) are like. A modern First Class is a very, very comfortable way to travel, and other than the novelty value, I'd certainly rather spend 8 hours in lie-flat that 5 hours in a recliner. That'll also depend on the time-of-day of the flight -- worth saving the time perhaps if you're traveling East-to-West, but for West-to-East might as well just overnight it?
Long story short, I think it'll have use-cases, but it's not like Concorde -- when Concorde launched, 1st Class over the Atlantic looked a lot like 1st Class inside the states now -- comfortable, but not somewhere you wanted to spend a lot of time