I think the author is right in wanting laws to try to directly control the thing they care about rather than indirectly affecting it.
I’m confused about the other point though. Did this rule affect transatlantic flights? Somehow Concorde was allowed and I would have thought that transatlantic routes would be sufficient to economically justify supersonic flights if they make sense. (Maybe they do make sense now).
I think the extrapolation of the max speed graph doesn’t really make sense. It may have made sense to do that in the ’60s or ’70s, as I think that people in the aviation industry reasonably thought that was the direction planes were going. The 747 was designed to become a cargo plane once supersonic planes replaced it. But apart from Concorde, supersonic civilian jets didn’t happen so is the claim here that the rule prevented them from being developed because of the extra economies of scale from selling a few more planes to fly between the east and west coast? That is: I think this argument would have been more convincing if transatlantic supersonic flight was also banned and Concorde hadn’t existed. Given that that’s not what happened, I think it must make a stronger case for that rule hindering the development of supersonic civil aviation rather than other things like consumers preferring comfort to speed or the increased speed only affecting time in the air and not travel to the airport, waiting there, baggage claim, and travel from the airport.
Another thing I believe is that noise pollution is generally underrated and that society and governments should care more about how much there is and reducing it.
And mainstream consumers preferring the lowest price to both.
But, yeah, if you're going to be any significant premium over lie-flat seating that's a tough sell for anyone for whom a small number of hours != losing money. (i.e. almost everyone.). Saving a few hours coast to coast for NY to London is not worth thousands of dollars to most people.
I thought Concorde was priced similarly to business class tickets on regular planes so I thought the trade off was speed vs lie-flat seating rather than speed vs dollars.[1]
There used to be a flight (BA1?) that showed a market desire for faster transatlantic flights: it took off from London City airport (lower travel time, potentially much lower; also less time in the airport as it’s smaller), all business class, flew to Ireland to refuel (runway is too short for it to take off fully loaded), passengers would do US passport control and customs in Ireland while the plane refuelled, then land in JFK and get transport to the city. I don’t think it has been reinstated since covid though. In the reverse direction, one could take a helicopter from downtown Manhattan to JFK, which improves speed except you need to arrive in advance of the flight and get a flight at a certain time, but you would go through security (and check-in?) in the heliport and so be on the post-security side when you got to JFK. I think they only have a midtown heliport now. You can book it through Uber, I think, and it is sometimes cheaper than an Uber to the airport.
So, I think there is some interest amongst frequent travellers for faster flights. I personally don’t sleep very well on flights so if I had a choice between a 7 hour lie-flat redeye from New York to London and a 3.5 hour[2] non-lie-flat flight at the same price, I would prefer the latter. But this would matter more if the travel/waiting time before/after the flight were reduced.
[1] I looked it up and I was wrong here. The cost was 10-15% more than first class which would have been more expensive than business class.
[2] I’m not sure what the right number to write down here is.
Concorde predated business class seating (and lie-flat) and, yeah, there was a premium over first class. (I had heard 30% but whatever.) My dad got "upgraded" once but he actually preferred regular (Pan Am I think) first class because of meal on board and timing.
Usually I'll take a day flight from NYC to London anyway so lie-flat doesn't really matter. I am taking a red-eye in a couple weeks, which I really try to avoid, but that's because United now has a direct from Boston to London so doing the zero dark thirty thing via Newark doesn't really make sense. If I'm awake the whole time, business is nicer but not a couple grand nicer for 7 hours or so. I can have some really nice meals and other things for that in London if I want to.
Yeah, there's no heliport at the former Pan Am building now but there is a heliport in midtown.
BA1 was the business class only LCY-JFK flight. It stopped and hasn't restarted AFAIK. Business-class only has been a tough sell economically.
> I would have thought that transatlantic routes would be sufficient to economically justify supersonic flights if they make sense. (Maybe they do make sense now).
Sure if you ignore the cost of developing the airplane. There is no way in hell that its worth it otherwise.
And that's why new things aren't developed. If its not the government spending billions of $ for a luxury product that has a tiny market, then nobody else will.
At best this rule prevented a few more Concorde routes.
But the idea that any US company would have build its own supersonics is crazy.
> Another thing I believe is that noise pollution is generally underrated and that society and governments should care more about how much there is and reducing it.
Yes. As 'Not Just Bikes' says, cities aren't loud, cars are loud.
Noise is an underrated factor in health, specially in densely populated places.
Boeing 'tried' in the sense that they said "We will try if the government pays for it". And also by 'tried' it means 'we propose an absolutely outrages design, to make sure it appeals to politicians and we can get money for it for the next 15 years.'.
As soon as the government money was gone, Boeing threw the plans in the trash. Everybody else who was competing for government money instantly threw their plans in the trash as soon it was clear no government money was coming.
I’m confused about the other point though. Did this rule affect transatlantic flights? Somehow Concorde was allowed and I would have thought that transatlantic routes would be sufficient to economically justify supersonic flights if they make sense. (Maybe they do make sense now).
I think the extrapolation of the max speed graph doesn’t really make sense. It may have made sense to do that in the ’60s or ’70s, as I think that people in the aviation industry reasonably thought that was the direction planes were going. The 747 was designed to become a cargo plane once supersonic planes replaced it. But apart from Concorde, supersonic civilian jets didn’t happen so is the claim here that the rule prevented them from being developed because of the extra economies of scale from selling a few more planes to fly between the east and west coast? That is: I think this argument would have been more convincing if transatlantic supersonic flight was also banned and Concorde hadn’t existed. Given that that’s not what happened, I think it must make a stronger case for that rule hindering the development of supersonic civil aviation rather than other things like consumers preferring comfort to speed or the increased speed only affecting time in the air and not travel to the airport, waiting there, baggage claim, and travel from the airport.
Another thing I believe is that noise pollution is generally underrated and that society and governments should care more about how much there is and reducing it.