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My personal hypothesis is that Asian and cross-Pacific traffic has grown considerably in the decades since Concorde was flying and I look forward to wealthy eastern markets keeping the supersonic market viable. If American and United don't figure it out I could see a gulf country carrier or Singapore Airlines making it work.

I haven't looked into profitability yet but a quick look at the list of busiest routes shows that Asia dominates the list. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_passenger_air_...




Agree that this would be important except that there's basically ~no work being done on supersonic trans-Pacific flight. Boom's design doesn't have the range to operate trans-Pacific, and AFAIK there has never been any supersonic passenger aircraft (built or designed) that has had the range to pull it off.

I do agree though, LHR-JFK holds very little fascination for me. It's a relatively short flight with a lot of ground-side overhead time, so the benefits of Going Very Fast seem pretty minimal. The prospect of SFO-HND or LAX-ICN very fast though seems a lot more appealing.


Yeah. You can/could get JFK (or EWR) to LHR (or LCY) without a red eye. Not sure what routes exist these days though I've taken EWR to LHR in time for a late-ish dinner in the city quite a few times. It's a long day but even in Economy Plus seating, it's not much longer/less comfortable than flying coast to coast.


I flew DUB-NYC-SEA recently, and honestly DUB-NYC on an a320 was a lot more comfortable than NYC-SEA on a 737…


The leaked United / Apple data[1] from 2019 was an interesting data point for this demand.

At the time, Apple was booking 50 business-class seats a day just between San Francisco and Shanghai.

That's one company, on one route. Representing one segment of demand.

Certainly, things are likely to change with the effects of Covid, but I think there's a lot of substance to your perspective.

[1] https://9to5mac.com/2019/01/14/united-airlines-apple-biggest...


Boom would be lovely for LAX/SFO to Singapore if the range allowed it. That could take some of the higher end traffic away from middle eastern carriers to the region.

I don't see it doing so well for the middle eastern markets, ultra long hauls on average spend a lot of time flying over land (minus the Australian flights) - for example, see LAX-DXB whose only water crossing is the arctic ocean, where supersonic might not be allowed for ice preservation purposes https://flightaware.com/live/flight/UAE216/history/20220815/... , DXB-Tokyo which is almost entirely land: https://flightaware.com/live/flight/UAE318/history/20220815/... , or DXB-Cape Town, which again is mostly over land: https://flightaware.com/live/flight/UAE772/history/20220816/...




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