United Airlines CEO doubts supersonic airliner from Boom will be ready by 2029

Damnicus said:

Remember that “Boom” company? What ever happened to them?

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They changed their name to Bust

deeb3_ee said:

It's hugely in fashion among businesses these days. Don't aim to make a profit, just escape with an offensive amount of cash before it all falls over.

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It has been "The Gaslight Century" in the US ever since the Orange Poobah got into the WH.

thxzetec said:

1 they claim mach 1.7 a 737 more like mach 0.78 so better ratio than that maybe 2
1 if you fly at 2X speed this is greater productivity. Yes you have fixed turn around time on ground but modern airlines spend much of their life in air (2 optimistic take off, landing etc)
2 There is premium market people pay to save time, save like 3 hours NYC to London
3 fuel burn: don't see hard numbers but certainly more
4 biggest issue I see is small capacity like half a 737, this hurt efficiency and also higher labor costs per seat

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Point 2.
Where is this premium market? They weren’t around near the end days of Concorde. The crash was just the final nail for them, they were loosing money for years before, because the market was not there anymore.

JohnDeL said:

Sure. Because a turbine that runs at a steady speed at ground level atmospheric pressure and temperatures and generates electrical power is going to be identical to a turbine that runs at variable speeds in a much lower pressure, much lower temperature, mugh higher wind speed environment to push an airplane at Mach 1...

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It doesn't need to be identical to have many parts of it which can be the same or slightly different. What is radically different is the safety requirements. If a ground based engine stops, or even explodes, it is very inconvenient. If the engine in an aircraft has a similar failure, the results can be much, much, worse. There are a number of examples of basic engine designs which have different models used for aircraft and ground based purposes; that doesn't mean the models are interchangeable.

Extrapolating the benefits of a turboshaft application to a turbojet application is quite a stretch. Completely different way to harness & control energy; pounds of thrust versus pounds of torque. Add the utterly different operating environment of these powerplants & accessory drive requirements, they become completely different animals. Ask any pilot that's flown both turboprops & jets.

The Pratt & Whitney PT-6 turboshaft engine is an example of both ground (remote pumping stations) & aviation (ubiquitous turboprop engines) applications but jet power it is not by any stretch. That's some bullshit marketing/investor speak.

Scott Kirby isn't a stupid guy...

Xenocrates said:

I disagree with that

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At last.
It wasn't that difficult.

flyxnite said:

Extrapolating the benefits of a turboshaft application to a turbojet application is quite a stretch. Completely different way to harness & control energy; pounds of thrust versus pounds of torque. Add the utterly different operating environment of these powerplants & accessory drive requirements, they become completely different animals. Ask any pilot that's flown both turboprops & jets.

The Pratt & Whitney PT-6 turboshaft engine is an example of both ground (remote pumping stations) & aviation (ubiquitous turboprop engines) applications but jet power it is not by any stretch. That's some bullshit marketing/investor speak.

Scott Kirby isn't a stupid guy...

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Jet engine core are also used as ground power. The old CF-6 of 747, DC-10 and A300s was a common enough conversion. Whip the fan off and use the core as a gas generator or somehting like that. I know they were used in ships. You get the opposite happening too. The engines in the BAe 146 are the ones out of the CH-47 Chinook with fans (and a small gearbox) added.

I would also add that the PT-6 also saw use as an F1 and Indycar engine in the back of the Lotus 56 though for ground use it's normally referred to as a GT-6.

TheBaconson said:

Point 2.
Where is this premium market? They weren’t around near the end days of Concorde. The crash was just the final nail for them, they were loosing money for years before, because the market was not there anymore.

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The premium market that wants to save ~2-3 hrs US East Coast to Europe (or vice-versa) can more cheaply do so flying private or charter. Flight time is not travel time. The combination of business jets with intercontinental range AND the ground security and customs time mean that a subsonic business jet leaving from the private terminal on your schedule will be a net shorter trip. It only gets worse when the business jet lets you fly directly to your destination and avoids a layover. Worst case, there's a re-fueling stop, which is still shorter than a traditional layover.

Additionally, an perhaps more important for the airlines, a 1.5x faster flight does not close the use-case for US-Europe flight schedules. The current flight times and schedules between the continents have been hyper-optimized to ensure the aircraft flying the route arrive:

• In time to make connections (at least hub-to-hub)
• Avoid nighttime takeoff and landing restrictions - applicable at a lot of European hubs
• Can complete a turn and get back in the air before the restrictions

Modern widebodies (777, 787, A350, A330NEO, etc) flying these routes get turned ASAP and can complete a back-and-forth from US to Europe over and over with ground time dominated by the turn time, not airport restrictions or alignment with connecting flights (that are driven by 'domestic' schedule).

While a smaller aircraft can be turned faster (potentially a lot faster), at 1.5x faster speed the flight time it still won't be short enough to get 2 round-trips a day. That means the airframe is sitting on the ground earning nothing... and that's a huge problem for a massive capital asset. This wasn't a problem for Concorde because Concorde's economics really didn't matter (and the biz-jet competition wasn't a thing)... but that will not be true for a modern supersonic airliner.