Why Hurry So Much?

We had a number of updates coming from Boom (the maker of the Overture - the passenger supersonic jet) last week. Supposedly the news were to excite the public, but the skeptic in me got a feeling like Overture is a solution looking for a problem. 

Of course I’d love to fly on Overture. At least once, to experience something new. But somehow I don’t think that cutting the end-to-end intercontinental journey time from the average of 15 hours to 10-12 hours makes a difference. An intercontinental flight (time in the air) is at most 50% of the total time, which includes commuting, checking in, boarding, taxing, deplaning, passing through border control, collecting luggage and commuting again.

So flying on Overture will be more of a status symbol than real “savings”. Especially as they indicate $5000 range ticket prices, which is twice of what you pay today for a round trip lie-flat upper class experience. It also remains to be seen how they will handle luggage, as some here may still remember Concorde did not carry any luggage - the suitcases were traveling on a 747 covering the same route. So there were severe logistical complexity aspects involved. 

Such aspects are also why in Europe or Japan people prefer to choose a high-speed train, which lets you show up just single minutes before departure and carries you from a city center to a city center with no cumbersome security procedures and with far less dependency on weather.

On my personal wishlist would be really more comfortable seats for everyone and I think I could trade some flight time for that - say more recline for an extra hour or two in the air. Unfortunately the airline industry has been moving the opposite way - WizzAir’s newest A321XLR will fly up to 8 hours with no recline at all (https://fortune.com/europe/2024/09/10/wizz-air-ceo-passengers-suffer-pain-europes-worst-airline-8-hour-flights/).

So it remains to be seen if the Overture takes off and how long it will stay airborne. My worry is - as it was the case with Concorde - the status aspect of supersonic commercial flying may not be enough to keep it from crashing into the ground. And by the way, I would equally love to cross the Atlantic on a Zeppelin rather than rushing at 1.7x of the speed of sound.