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Sure. So 1/2 the price of Concorde but connects all the major cities of the world at Mach 1.7 instead of the 0.85 of a 777?
It only connects all the major cities of the world if
Right now the only city pair which has supported an all-premium flight sustainably is London-NYC*, and it currently doesn't. The British Airways Babybus is a pretty direct comparator to what Boom would be offering (all-premium service marketed to full-fare business travellers that offered significant time savings by running from London City and pre-clearing US immigration while refueling in Shannon), and the economics was marginal. (It was cancelled during the pandemic and never reinstated). As well as the problems selling enough full-fare business class tickets to keep the plane flying, there is the issue that most of the airports that might welcome an all-premium flight are slot-constrained, and a 777 makes more money out of the slot than a small all-premium flight.
You need fat point-to-point routes to make Boom work, which are long enough for supersonic flight to be worth it, short enough to be within range, and mostly over water. On day 1 that means the premium trans-Atlantic city pairs only. Business travellers won't use a less-than-daily service, and the whole point of flying supersonic is lost if you end up with a layover when a non-stop subsonic flight was available.
It's a great product (assuming they can actually build the Symphony engine, which I rate as a 70% shot) and if they do sell a $7000 LHR-JFK return I will probably fly it. But "Concorde at a third to half the price" gets you regular supersonic service on 10-20 city pairs vs 1 - not a transformation of the airline industry similar to the 707 or the 747. Boom are not proposing to change the physics of supersonic flight or the economics of the airline industry.
* London-NYC is comfortably the busiest long-haul city pair, with about 40% more seats than London-Dubai in 2nd place (overflies densely-populated Europe so probably not supersonic-friendly) and almost double number 3(Paris-NYC). Number 4 is London-LA (out of Overture range if they have to slow down over land) and number 5 is Singapore-Melbourne (dependent on Australian government permission to make sonic booms over the Outback). Tokyo-Singapore and Seoul-Singapore would be perfect supersonic routes if they were fat enough to support daily service, which appears to be marginal.
I do expect that if they can get the noise level down, Mach 1.7 over land will be achievable. Granted this is more of a political than engineering question. On range, yeah, that is a sore spot. Hopefully a LR version gets to 5500nm which unlocks most of the transpacific.
The economics will be interesting. I'm not sure daily service is a must as you can freely mix-and-match supersonic and subsonic travel. Heck, you could run the thing purely westbound (LHR->JFK->LAX/SFO->ICN/HND->DXB->LHR) with the understanding that your biz travelers are taking a lie-flat on their eastbound legs. All-premium has been a losing proposition (RIP midwest) but that seems like a capacity thing right?
That said, you've convinced me to adjust my optimism a bit downwards, at least in the medium (say, 2035/2040) timeframe.
I think we agree now. Overture isn't going to be transformative. If Concerto has another 20% better fuel efficiency per seat mile, a 5500nm range, and a low-boom design that allows Mach 1.7 flight over sparsely populated land areas (particularly most of CONUS and the Australian outback) then that probably would be transformative. But all of those are fighting basic physics - with the possible exception of the range they are not going to happen based on simple incremental improvements.
I like the idea of flying half the Overtures on a westbound RTW route, although you need to add a Singapore stop between Tokyo and Dubai (HND->DXB crosses too much densely populated land, including China which is not going to allow supersonic overflight by Americans, whereas HND->SGP is over water and SGP->DXB is over water if you do a small detour round India - also HND-SGP and SGP-DXB have better economics than HND->DXB). It also doesn't work with current airline business models.
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One way I could see it being transformative is if it puts more pressure on cities to finally improve their airport infrastructure.
Right now, it usually takes at least an hour to check in, clear security, and get to your gate. But it's highly random, so most people try to get there at least 2 hours before the flight. Even more if you're at a busy airport and trying to do something complicated.
Then on top of that, most airports are far from the city and most cities don't have very fast transit options to get there. Typically an hour to get to the airport, could be more if you're coming from far away.
Repeat again on the other side, especially for an international flight... 1 hour to get out of the airport, 1 hour to get back into the city. Minimum.
Flying from NYC to London takes about 7 hours. That's annoying, but becomes much worse then you add in around 5 hours of extra time to get from your home to the plane, and then the plane to your real destination. 12 hours, plus the jet lag and stress of travel basically kills an entire day.
Right now, we put up with all the extra waiting because there's just not enough pressure to make it better. 5 hours of waiting seems reasonable compared to 7 hours on the plane. And rich people can avoid some of that anyway by using private planes. But if Boom can get that down to 3.5 hours on a plane, I think there'd be a lot more pressure on cities to improve the overall airport experience. It's not impossible, it wasn't all that long ago that people could just drive right up to the gate and step on the plane with minimal security. We still need security of course, but we could automate a lot of it, and add valet parking and better public transit.
Combine all of that? Let's say the current model is 12 hours total from NYC to London. Boom + Better Infrastructure could get it down to 6 hours total. That really is a pretty change. It would make it a lot more practical to go to a meeting in both cities on the same day. Or work in one for the week and commute home for the weekend. Still a long trip, but only half of what it is now.
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