Yes I have heard that about Virgin. They have been out of service too long anyway. But the design is proven and could be built again with lower risk.

Like the Concorde, they aim for flying at FL600 or so when supersonic.

Once you get above FL400, it really doesn't matter too much. You are in outer space. At FL450, 85% of the atmosphere is below you. At FL600, it is 93%. Walking out an airlock on the space station would only be 7% worse in some fashion.


The planes are not slower today, the airlines fly them slower to save fuel.

I'm tooling along in my simple straight wing Citation at FL410 and M0.70, and the airliners are all doing M0.74 to M0.78 generally. I was behind a Southwest 737 at FL390 and he was doing 435 KTAS and I was doing 405 KTAS. I can live with that difference to be able to land on a 3000 ft runway and fly my plane single pilot.

I wasn't at max power, either. A 10% reduction in fuel flow is only about a 3% reduction in speed, so I back it off to save fuel, just like the airlines are doing.

Mike C.

I understand it’s for fuel economy. That doesn’t change the fact that airliners used to cruise faster than mmo on a 737 or A320. Ive been in the cockpit at .84-.85.

So, at FL600, or Concorde for that matter, what happens to the pax if pressurization is suddenly lost? TUC = 3-4 seconds.

Probably bad for the passengers - but I'd fly on one anyway.

So would I (if I could afford it). I just anticipate some interesting certification issues.

That would imply that other commercial jets aren't capable of flying faster than .78 Mach. I have heard that today's airliners typically cruise slower than airliners did in the past but I didn't think that was to avoid sonic booms. How fast can airliners and high end business jets cruise today?

I can't stand to watch videos that jump around every 1/10 of a second. If you have something to show me - SHOW ME, don't over-dramatize it with jumpy screen shots which tells me nothing. Nobody looks at the world that way...

Dan

That would imply that other commercial jets aren't capable of flying faster than .78 Mach. I have heard that today's airliners typically cruise slower than airliners did in the past but I didn't think that was to avoid sonic booms. How fast can airliners and high end business jets cruise today?

exactly. The trend is to fly slower and save fuel, not to go faster. Really flight time has very little to do with overall travel time. To travel faster they need to cut down the multi-hour pushback&wait routine, and the wait-for-a-gate nonsense after landing. The current crop of airliners are plenty fast, it is poor execution that results on slow travel.

.94
As Ron White would say " we are hauling ass!"
https://businessaircraft.bombardier.com ... lobal-8000

Faster only really works on high-cost, long haul service. We're talking about trans oceanic, trans continental, nonstop flights. Throw a single connection in and you've blown most of the advantage. Concord was a niche airplane. Boom will be a niche airplane for the same reason: Cost. It's expensive to go fast. The majority of the flying public doesn't want to pay for comfortable let alone fast. I can drive to Chicago in the same five hours that it takes to airline there and the flight portion of that is 45 minutes. Find a way to trim a fifteen hour flight to six or seven and now we're talking, but how many of us fly legs that long?

And the Boom plane is expected to only be able to do ~4,000nm, so that takes the ultra-long haul option off the table. That can maybe do Seattle-Tokyo, but probably not with a headwind.

I'm sure a few routes will work for this type of service. But I find I wish my Boston-Paris flights were ~2 hours longer so I could get a little more sleep and be less of a zombie. Maybe if it was only 3 hours then I would love it, but I have a feeling that option won't be available on Concur

Whenever I flew commercial biz class, the slower and longer the flight the better.

Dan

I always loved racing SW to the departure gate.

I was in a hurry to get from Anchorage to LAX at the end of my line to catch a flight home. I pushed the throttles up from .84 to .86. I saved 15 minutes, and burned an extra 10,000 pounds of fuel. Double the speed, quadruple the drag. Going fast is expensive.

For our small planes reducing drag to get more speed is more effective than a bigger engine. The best way to save trip time is don't diddle daddle around the airport before flight.