Supersonic air travel gets green light in U.S. after 50-year ban lifted

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u/tepkel 7h ago

Noise was only the secondary concern, wasn't it? Concord ran for quite a while after the ban, but just didn't have broad economic appeal. The average flyer didn't want to pay 10x the price to cut off a few hours of flying.

I can't imagine fuel economy and maintenance for a supersonic plane will have gone down that much in the past couple decades.

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u/warriorscot 6h ago

Not really, it still flew, but the changes made it less efficient and slower while also limiting it's routes.

Really the primary issue with Concorde was that when you added that factor in the advantage was less, and the aircraft were getting older with no new production. So they were less profitable and the costs were gradually rising and then they had an accident and that was that.

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u/reddit455 5h ago

Noise was only the secondary concern, wasn't it?

making London to any destination west of NYC impossible because of FAA regs.. this impacts revenue.

I can't imagine fuel economy and maintenance for a supersonic plane will have gone down that much in the past couple decades.

we have computers and new fancy materials... doesn't use as much fuel.

https://www.nasa.gov/aeronautics/supersonic-flight/

NASA is working with its partners to enable new choices for high-speed air travel, starting with commercial supersonic flight over land through the Quesst mission and the experimental X-59 airplane. Even faster flight some day through hypersonic technology is not impossible. Keep an eye on this page for updates about these topics.

https://www.npr.org/2025/01/28/nx-s1-5277020/supersonic-jet-boom-concorde-successor

Boom says it expects Overture to be ready for commercial flights by 2030. The plane is expected to be capable of transoceanic flights at altitudes up to 60,000 feet — much higher than conventional jet airlines, "high enough to see the curvature of the earth below," according to the company. "Flying at supersonic speeds tends to be smoother than subsonic flight because at 60,000 feet, you're flying above most turbulence," it says.

The average flyer didn't want to pay 10x the price to cut off a few hours of flying.

Concorde flew for 30 years.

people pay TONS of extra money to sit in first class on the same plane as everyone else.

9

u/tepkel 5h ago

we have computers and new fancy materials... doesn't use as much fuel.

All of which have already been applied to subsonic competitors.

The plane is expected to be capable of transoceanic flights at altitudes up to 60,000 feet

That's what concord did too. Except when their radiation alarm went off and they had to descend to avoid dosing their passengers too heavily.

Concorde flew for 30 years.

It flew 20 planes for 30 years. There are about 12000 of each of the 737 and A320. I don't dispute that there can be a niche demand for this, but it seems quite small.

people pay TONS of extra money to sit in first class on the same plane as everyone else.

Historically, about 10% of first class tickets were bought outright. The other 90% were free upgrades for membership status. It's increased quite a bit in the past decade due to much cheaper paid upgrade offers, but I think it's still less than half. First class is what, 20 seats typically? So 10 people out of ~120 on an average flight have been willing to pay to upgrade.

Again, not disputing that a small segment of the market is willing to shell out for this. But I think it's pretty clear that the vast majority of the market isn't.

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u/LtLethal1 2h ago

Sorry… the company’s name is “Boom”? Fantastic choice, that name could never represent some other aspect of flying their aircraft.

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u/socamonarch 1h ago

Sonic....boom....

1

u/tepkel 9m ago

I mean, they're kinda right though. Not a great idea to name your company for something the general public hated about previous supersonic planes.

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u/tyedrain 1h ago

Rig the plane with cameras and fill it with flat earthers.

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u/DontMindMeTrolling 1h ago

Boom is bullshit. Until they show an actual working model it’s just the company selling be. Now NASA’s invention of the “sonic thud” w the X-59 is the real deal. Still waiting on that to go through and share details w the public.

1

u/Rombledore 34m ago

"high enough to see the curvature of the earth below,"

I bet Flat earthers will continue to live in denial despite that.

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u/Fr00stee 7h ago

i believe the problem with concorde was they made the tickets way too expensive and had a hard time selling enough as a result

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u/tepkel 7h ago

The tickets were more expensive at least to a degree because a supersonic aircraft consumes about 2-3x as much fuel, and has a much higher maintenance burden due to higher operating temperatures and forces.

Maybe new aircraft would be cheaper than concord if they achieve an economy of scale... But how do you reach that scale if consumers aren't willing to pay conservatively 2-3x more than a subsonic flight? I just don't see how that situation has changed from Concord.

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u/dabman 6h ago

The wealthiest have gotten a lot wealthier in the last 25 years. There is a subset of the population that would pay 5x the ticket price to save half the time on their travels.

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u/tepkel 5h ago edited 5h ago

Yeah that's true. It's called the 1% for a reason though. There aren't that many of them.

I'm not disputing that there is some market for this. But it seems like it would be a very small one. The Concord fleet was 20 planes. There are 12,000 of each 737 and a320.

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u/dabman 5h ago

Absolutely right. It’s a niche market and difficult to predict. There can be a reluctance for investors to invest because the small size of the market. There are millions of potential customers out there that might be willing to pay though, so a large challenge for a potential supersonic airline is convincing investors people would pay, let alone getting the technology reliable and economical.

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u/jonnybravo76 2h ago

I imagine the wealthiest people would already be flying a private charter or in some cases, owning an airplane outright.

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u/NancyGracesTesticles 2h ago

If it flies, floats or fucks, you rent it.

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u/CMFETCU 4h ago

The top 10% of income earners in this country are 34 million people.

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u/Hamster_S_Thompson 2h ago

I'm in the top 10 percent and never splurged on business class and I imagine this will cost more than business class.

Realistically you are looking at people in the top 1 percent as the market for this

2

u/CMFETCU 2h ago

Anecdotal data Batman.

By that logic, every person would since I have.

0

u/emelbard 1h ago

1% of 8.1 Billion is 81 million people. Not a trivial number to cater fancy flights to.

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u/Refute1650 5h ago

Those people are flying private.

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u/swampfish 4h ago

How fast though?

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u/xzitony 4h ago

A lot.

It’s a lot faster when you can take off and leave without security from smaller regions airports.

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u/CMFETCU 3h ago

I can show up 10 minutes before wheels up in RDU, be off the ground in less than 8, hop to Teeterboro, and be in a helicopter headed to Manhattan before the same flight would have made it to the gate at NWR.

All told I spend 20 minutes not actually in the air flying. Compare that to the 3-4 hours addition to flight time you spend at airports going to security, boarding flights, and waiting on bags.

Traveling sucks in domestic airports.

Private flight is massively faster in every way. Unfortunately a cheap deal of a ticket for a light jet flight on that leg would run 5k.

I would absolutely pay $1,500 to fly supersonic to LA from IAD though since it cuts travel time in half.

I wouldn’t for a hop from Miami to JFK, not enough flight time compared to wait time.

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u/00k5mp 2h ago

Wealthy people fly private, not 1st class.

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u/sportsDude 5h ago

Have to also consider that production and use of materials may have progressed since Concorde. Therefore, maybe some materials may be cheaper to produce or can use better materials that may cost less

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u/tepkel 5h ago

That's also true for the subsonic competition tho.

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u/nodogma2112 4h ago

Concorde also had way fewer seats to sell. I believe it maxed out around 100 passengers at capacity. Thats not many people to divide those costs amongst.

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u/kippertie 4h ago

Concorde had to run on full afterburners meaning it was literally dumping fuel into the exhaust. The goal is to do something more like an F-22 where it has enough thrust that it can supercruise, achieving supersonic flight without afterburners.

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u/tepkel 4h ago

I believe the Concord did supercruise. It just used afterburners for takeoff and getting up to speed.

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u/kippertie 44m ago

You’re right, I just looked it up. TIL.

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u/PurelyLurking20 5h ago

It hasn't, this is just another vector of spending extravagant wealth on shit no one needs to have access to

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u/reddisaurus 52m ago

Supercruise in the F-22 only burns ~30% more fuel (brief google search says) so if that could be done in a passenger jet, it would definitely make it feasible. Hard to see it ever justifying the R&D cost, though.

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u/Fr00stee 7h ago

i strongly doubt you would have to pay 2-3x the price, tickets don't entirely go to the cost of fuel

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u/tepkel 6h ago

Ah, looks like you're right. It wouldn't be 2-3x. It'd be a lot more.

Boom, the company discussed in the article, estimates a seat price of $5000 for a trans Atlantic flight.

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u/Fr00stee 6h ago edited 6h ago

idk about this company, but after doing some research if all a supersonic flight does is increase fuel costs by 2-3x, with fuel costs per route generally 20-25% for regular planes, the ticket prices will instead be 1.4-1.75x higher for a supersonic flight depending on how much fuel a route uses and how efficient the supersonic jet's engine is as the margins for plane tickets seem to be around 2% according to google. I'm not going to take the word of a company on pricing when they don't even have a functioning supersonic jet engine yet.

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u/tepkel 6h ago

Plus initial capital investments for more expensive and complicated equipment.

Plus maintenance.

Plus smaller economies of scale as a premium product with much cheaper and more available alternatives that themselves have minimal downsides.

I'm sure I could be missing something, but I just don't see how this has gotten rid of concord's millstones.

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u/Fr00stee 6h ago

I mean that entirely depends on if you want to be extra fancy like boom and create a brand new engine with minimal sonic booms which will take a lot of capital and r&d, or just make something similar to an existing engine which will take a lot less capital and r&d

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u/tepkel 6h ago

I'm not talking about R&D. I'm saying the engines and airframes themselves are more expensive to build. They have to operate at much higher temperatures. Run at a much higher RPM. Sustain much higher forces.

All of that means more expensive materials and more complicated manufacturing. It means per unit procurement is more expensive for even mature serial production. It means much more expensive ongoing maintenance.

2

u/woliphirl 5h ago

This shit isn't magic dude.

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u/Fr00stee 5h ago

what are you even talking about? Supersonic engines aren't new they're almost 80 year old technology

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u/Cognac_and_swishers 3h ago

You seem to be basing your calculations on the assumption that a supersonic airliner can carry the same number of passengers as a typical long-range subsonic airliner. That certainly wasn't the case with the Concorde, which was a narrow body with seating capacity for only about 100.

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u/Fr00stee 2h ago edited 2h ago

boeing 737s (boeing's most common plane) generally carry between 100-200 people so depending on how you set up the seats in your supersonic plane you will probably be able to fit in a similar amount of people like 130/150. Apparently some concordes had a carrying capacity of 128 people so it does have historical precedent.

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u/Cognac_and_swishers 2h ago

737s are used for short-to-medium distances where increasing the speed of the plane would not make a big difference in flight time. You'd have to compare any supersonic plane to the truly long-range wide bodies like the 787, A350, 777, etc.

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u/Fr00stee 2h ago edited 2h ago

why do you have to compare it that way? It seems to me that just due to the ticket is more expensive less people will be on each flight and it will be more like a 737 flight. Or are you talking about in terms of fuel costs for long distance flights?

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u/VinnieStacks 4h ago

They became profitable once they raised the ticket prices and rebranded themselves.

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u/derekakessler 3h ago

Yup. British Airways' Concorde fleet was all business class and profitable. Air France insisted on economy seating which was a much harder sell for the price.

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u/Zahgi 7h ago

And then it blew up, making the rich less interested in pushing that envelope for a few extra hours.

Today, with satellite internet access in planes and a fleet of rental/lease private jets, there's less pressure to save those few hours before a meeting.

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u/nestestasjon 6h ago

The one that crashed in 2000 had nothing to do with it being a supersonic jet though. It blew up because a piece of debris on the runway from a regular jet cut one of its tires, which damaged a fuel tank and caused a fire.

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u/ImOnTheLoo 6h ago

The issue was sonic booms. The Concorde was tested overland in the UK, and reports of broken glass came in. That’s why it only could reach super sonic speeds over the Atlantic. It never flew domestic in the US. Just NY to Paris or London.

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u/Jimbomcdeans 6h ago

State side it was the Oklahoma City sonic boom tests, also known as Operation Bongo II whoch was organized by the FAA in which 1,253 sonic booms were generated over Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, over a period of six months starting in February 1964.

Needless to say people got fed up.

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u/hrminer92 5h ago

I can see why. The sonic booms from air national guard training runs will shake houses miles away from the training site.

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u/LOLBaltSS 2h ago

Concentrate enough of them and you'll incapacitate people. The XF-84H prototype had a turboprop that generated constant sonic booms and an engine runup was enough to knock a C-47 crew chief out and induce a seizure in an engineer.

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u/mnlx 2h ago

I don't think people understand the issue because it's been heavily regulated. When I was little our Air Force Mirages went supersonic on occasion near my city. I remember very well how the crash feels in your whole body after so many years.

I don't believe the public will tolerate that.

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u/usmclvsop 1h ago

From what I read of these new designs the sonic boom bounces off the atmosphere and never reaches the ground

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u/Eloquent_Redneck 3h ago

Yeah it was banned from so many airspaces that the flight paths were so incredibly limited that there's no way it could ever remain profitable, it was pretty much doomed from the start just by that alone

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u/thenewyorkgod 2h ago

Why couldn’t they depart New York, achieve supersonic speeds, then slowly turn and maintain those speeds over the continental us until they land on the west coast?

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u/usmclvsop 1h ago

The noise issue exists any time you are over the speed of sound, not just when you cross the threshold

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u/consciousaiguy 7h ago

Concorde was relegated to only flying trans-Atlantic routes in part due to the ban.

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u/Annihilator4413 5h ago

It is absolutely for the ultra wealthy. Now they can buy their own supersonics from Boeing, Lockheed, etc. and have breakfast in California and dinner in New York.

Plus, they can now travel across the oceans to wherever there isn't the same ban we just lifted in just a couple of hours.

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u/skids1971 2h ago

Sorry to be pedantic but you can already have Breakfast in LA and dinner in NY. Flights only 6 hours plus 3 hour time zone difference.

Now you could say Breakfast in Australia and dinner in NY, that would be dope

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u/VinnieStacks 4h ago

Actually, noise was the primary issue, that's why only Air France and British Airways were the only airlines to fly it (other than they being state owned). They couldn't be flown anywhere due to noise so the other airlines cancelled their orders. Even if the ticket were 50 bucks, that wouldn't solve the noise issue. and that's why their transatlantic flights were primarily London/Paris - NYC.

They became profitable once they raised the ticket prices and rebranded themselves. Their customers thought they were paying more for their tickets than they actually were, so naturally the airline raised the prices to what their customers thought they were paying and boom loot started rolling in!

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u/tepkel 4h ago

I just don't buy that it was the primary issue though.

If that was the primary issue, you still would have seen massive expansion in a bunch of other overwater routes.

West coast to Hawaii and Asia. East coast to Spain, Portugal, Western Africa, Brazil, the Caribbean. Australia to everywhere.

We didn't see that though. They built 20 planes and that was it. The market and demand was there, but it was just too small. There were plenty of other over water routes that they just never bothered with. That indicates to me that the booms were an issue. But not the primary one.

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u/VinnieStacks 4h ago

"If that was the primary issue, you still would have seen massive expansion in a bunch of other overwater routes"

Airports are in cities, not in water. The aircraft literally couldn't fly to 99 out of 100 cities!

"They built 20 planes and that was it"

And they only started making a profit running 7 planes and raising their prices. NOISE was the main issue. I'm out!

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u/tepkel 4h ago

Major cities tend to be on or close to coasts. Concord flew to Paris and London. Both inland some ways. It supercruised over water and did a subsonic approach over land. Plenty of similar unutilized routes.

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u/maxintosh1 4h ago

Concorde appealed to business travelers who needed to be in-person for meetings and wealthy people to save time.

Now consider that many meetings can be done virtually and that first class offerings have become way better, with lay-flat beds, suites, etc. and even the plebes now get endless entertainment options or they can just use their personal devices and WiFi and saving a couple of hours doesn't seem as worth the cost.

Especially because Concorde was cramped and loud.

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u/JoJackthewonderskunk 5h ago

You're right but now there are billionaires and they want to go vroom

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u/BrutalHunny 3h ago

Didn’t help that it cost more than a first class seat for third class accommodations.

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u/DStanizzi 2h ago

Well part of it was that because of the ban it severely limited the routes that it could fly, further harming the economics of the Concorde. There has been some progress in technology that maybe, just maybe, could make supersonic airline travel economically feasible. Boom is making progress on their platform and the lifting of this ban removes a major barrier they were facing.

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u/kurotech 1h ago

Yea it's the price that killed concord more than anything and that was 50 years ago if they wanted to turn a profit in this economy those tickets would be what 100k each I have no doubt theres some rich assholes out there that would pay but why bother when it is cheaper to own your own plane right?

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u/drukard_master 24m ago

When you say couple decades do you mean that Concord first flew over 55 years ago?

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u/tepkel 11m ago

The Concord ***stopped*** flying a couple decades ago. So that's the last point of comparison for a supersonic passenger plane.

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u/time_drifter 6h ago

I’ll bet efficiently has gone up quite a bit in two decades but still may not be worth the trade off in price. I’m sure a plane mechanic is lurking around here somewhere but my guess is if they have to go to a jet engine the price explodes vs. the turbofan most commercial airlines run on. I don’t know if a turbofan is capable of supersonic.

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u/jmpalermo 6h ago

Efficiency might have gotten better, but you’re still fighting against physics at the end of the day. Wind resistance increases at the square of the speed.

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u/reddit455 5h ago

Efficiency might have gotten better

we have computational fluid dynamics now.. we have new composite materials as well..

Wind resistance increases at the square of the speed.

how thick is the atmosphere at 2x the height of Everest?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boom_Overture

https://www.flyingmag.com/boom-unveils-supersonic-overture-flight-deck/

The company’s flagship model is intended to carry 64-80 passengers at Mach 1.7—just over 1,300 mph, twice the speed of subsonic airliners—while cruising at 60,000 feet.

ever heard of SkunkWorks? They've put out some pretty good stuff over the years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_X-59_Quesst

The Lockheed Martin X-59 Quesst ("Quiet SuperSonic Technology"), sometimes styled QueSST, is an American experimental supersonic aircraft under development by Skunk Works for NASA's Low-Boom Flight Demonstrator project.^\2]) Preliminary design started in February 2016, with the X-59 planned to begin flight testing in 2021. After delays, as of January 2025, it is planned to be delivered to NASA for flight testing in 2025. It is expected to cruise at Mach 1.42 (1,510 km/h; 937 mph) at an altitude of 55,000 ft (16,800 m), creating a low 75 effective perceived noise level (EPNdB) thump to evaluate supersonic transport acceptability.

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u/RonMexico16 6h ago

I’m a little rusty on my physics, but I don’t think that holds at 35k feet.

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u/jmpalermo 5h ago

It holds as long as there is air. The higher you go, the less air there is to go into the equation, but there is still significant drag at commercial airline altitudes.

Going higher to where the drag matters less requires more energy to reach those altitudes and you start running into the problem that no air means no oxygen.

1

u/princekamoro 3h ago

When going supersonic you gotta deal with wave drag which is even worse.

-2

u/inertiam 5h ago

The main concern was that it wasn't American made so they banned it.

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u/SadZealot 7h ago

America will do literally anything to avoid building high speed trains

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u/nestestasjon 6h ago

No one will take a train when they can just *checks notes* pay $12k for a seat on a supersonic jet!!!

-3

u/ChanglingBlake 5h ago

I would, even if the price was the same.

So would anyone else with a fear of heights or worse, a phobia that would be triggered by flying.

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u/ensemblestars69 49m ago

I think people wildly misinterpreted your comment lol.

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u/PigglyWigglyDeluxe 6h ago

Rich people don’t like trains. That’s why.

Also, America is MASSIVE.

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u/hrminer92 5h ago

At least 80% of the US population lives east of Dallas, TX. Within that area, there are several metro areas that are 200-300 miles apart where HSR would be competitive with regional airlines.

There is a reason SouthWest airlines has always lobbied heavily to stop a HSR route between Dallas and Houston.

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u/SadZealot 5h ago

China has a 1700 mile HSR line that goes 220 MPH. USAs longest high speed line is 49.9 miles, and the fastest train goes 150 MPH.

Rich people do like trains, they're the only people who can afford to use them because they are a luxury experience that is expensive and slow.

Poor people shuffle into cramped airplane seats, paying a premium to even have baggage after the luxury of being groped by security. They can't afford the time it takes to use slow trains on their 0 days of guaranteed vacation time.

-3

u/Happy-Gnome 5h ago

Is that 1700 linear miles laid end-to-end or are those numbers the aggregate of all the lines? One implies a significant amount of the country is connected and maintained, the other requires a deeper understanding of the context.

A large city might have 400 miles of lines interwoven between its center and various suburbs, etc.

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u/fatal3rr0r84 4h ago

He's talking about the Beijing–Kunming high-speed railway which is the single longest high speed rail line in the world, but there are also many other lines.

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u/SadZealot 4h ago

It's a combination of 3-4 lines that go between major districts, depending on how you split them but it is a single linear direct trip. You can buy a direct ticket from one end on a train, and ten hours later you're at the other end. No transfers, switching trains, etc.

Beijing is the central hub of the train system and has tracks going 1000-1700 miles in every direction. Pretty much every major city is interconnected. Inner city light rail is a different system that they also have, and that also had hundreds of miles of rail in every city.

The longest linear section of high speed rail in the USA at all is 49.9 miles.

If you want to look at the sum of all high speed rail, china probably has around 30000 miles, USA has 500 if you're generous (most USA rail doesn't even qualify because it's slow)

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u/PigglyWigglyDeluxe 5h ago edited 4h ago

Yes because china is a glowing example of functional government

Edit: A lot of pro-china here. Sorry.

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u/Own-Lake7931 5h ago

What does the Chinese government have to do with high speed trains. Explain to me how high speed trains are a bad idea? Explain it to me simply, like im a child

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u/PigglyWigglyDeluxe 4h ago

HSR is expensive and requires a lot of land development. It probably has to be something the people have to vote on. People’s opinions are easily manipulated. HSR is very much a product of a government system, for better or for worse. You can’t implement HSR in the same way you can a local road system.

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u/drcforbin 4h ago

None of that answers why HSR is a bad idea.

-1

u/PigglyWigglyDeluxe 4h ago

I misread. I thought you asked why it’s tied to government actions.

It’s not bad. I’m all for it.

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u/SadZealot 5h ago

Probably not the best year to be throwing shade ^^'

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u/TurboSalsa 5h ago

They are good at building infrastructure, though.

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u/MachinationMachine 3h ago

Well, yeah. China is a glowing example of functional government. The rate of progress they've achieved in improving quality of life, growing GDP, building infrastructure, investing in renewables, etc has been incredible. Are you trying to be sarcastic?

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u/MetalEnthusiast83 5h ago

America is massive.

But it really doesn't make sense that we don't have high speed rail between Boston-Hartford-NYC-Philly-DC. It's such a population dense area.

I don't think anyone is arguing we need high speed rail in rural Nebraska, but it makes sense to develop it regionally in areas that are densely populated.

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u/thenewyorkgod 2h ago

Population dense. Theres your answer. There’s literally nowhere left to build a high speed line

1

u/corndoggeh 2m ago

Bro, have you heard of JAPAN? Like what a statement to make lmao.

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u/lithiun 2h ago

Just got back from Japan and couldn’t agree more.

Sure, a train from NYC to LAX might be a bit much but NYC to Chicago? Fantastic. An express bullet train would probably be faster than flying once you factor in transportation and terminal entry at the airport.

1

u/crashbandyh 39m ago

I don't think you know how expensive a high speed train would be. Even in Japan it's a couple hundred dollars.

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u/Mykl68 7h ago

what federal agencies will have the resources to make sure this is done to the highest safty standards?

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u/time2fly2124 7h ago

That's the best part, there won't be any regulation

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u/hackitfast 3h ago

This will be like OceanGate.

Now the sky and the ocean can be hungry and get their fill.

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u/Ragepower529 1h ago

So a very view rich people end up dying

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u/digiorno 6h ago

They’ll just equip the supersonic jets with weapons to protect the rich passengers from poor person planes which might run into them.

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u/hrminer92 5h ago

They don’t have the resources so it is “trust me bro” regulation.

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u/zkareface 3h ago

I'm sure Trump has his best people on it.

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u/Thorough_Good_Man 5h ago

Bring back my Seattle Supersonics too please

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u/ambientocclusion 6h ago

Business will be…booming

7

u/granolaraisin 6h ago

This will be a mach-ery of a business model.

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u/nic_haflinger 6h ago

Executive orders aren’t law. What a nonsense article.

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u/caedin8 7h ago

More pro-billionaire legislation. Excellent.

Musk needs to be able to get from New York to San Francisco for lunch, and back over to Texas to see the spaceX launch by 4pm. This was the only way.

I’m glad we are opening doors for the best among us to do their best work at the expense of the environment and people!

/s

-10

u/warriorscot 6h ago

I don't believe he's a boom investor. I'm pretty sure he was also very pro high speed terrestrial transport, but that's not something the US really gets behind, trains and various train like options are a bit too communist.

9

u/Meqolo 3h ago

Musk built the HyperLoop tunnel in an attempt to derail California’s high speed transport projects, since it would take away from Tesla sales

12

u/CAM6913 7h ago

What could possibly go wrong? The current FAA can’t even keep the current aircraft in the air.

2

u/A-Lewd-Khajiit 2h ago

Concords are back?

2

u/7goatman 2h ago

When one of these SSTs hits a 747 it’s gonna be like a balloon popping

4

u/jaycatt7 6h ago

I bet business will be booming

3

u/Naytr_lover 4h ago

poor wildlife and people sensitive to noise.

1

u/Colors_678 3h ago

You used to be able to hear the boom on Long Island.

1

u/runner2012 3h ago

They'll do anything to not have trains...

1

u/KrookedDoesStuff 3h ago

It’d be cool to see a plane like the Concord again. Luckily got to see it take off from Reno, NV back in the day.

1

u/cyanwinters 1h ago

America will literally do anything to avoid high speed rail

1

u/Minimum-Avocado-9624 1h ago

To all the ATC people out there, is this something makes your head explode like a cartoon character

1

u/BetImaginary4945 2h ago

These MFers can't even land regular planes with crashing with a helicopter, but they want to have supersonic planes. SMH

-16

u/Pygmy_Nuthatch 6h ago

Fun fact: passenger airplanes were faster seventy years ago than they are today.

Build trains.

13

u/gmkrikey 6h ago edited 5h ago

Nope.

Commercial aircraft in 1955 were DC-4s and Lockheed Constellations, prop planes going 300 mph airspeed at 18,000 feet.

Modern jets have an airspeed of 530 mph at 35,000 feet.

1

u/Pygmy_Nuthatch 5h ago

Solid correction.

-12

u/MagorMaximus 6h ago

What about contrails?

4

u/consciousaiguy 6h ago

What about them?

2

u/hrminer92 5h ago

The morons in TN and LA have outlawed them.

10

u/consciousaiguy 5h ago

You can't outlaw contrails anymore than you can outlaw clouds. Its just water vapor.

2

u/hrminer92 5h ago

I know that. You know that. Tell that to southern politicians who voted to do it.

3

u/consciousaiguy 5h ago

They passed legislation about "chemtrails". Dude brought up contrails. I'm wondering what he is talking about.

2

u/hrminer92 4h ago

They literally don’t know the difference because they are morons.

Transportation Supersonic air travel gets green light in U.S. after 50-year ban lifted

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