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Phil Hobbs

wrote:
On Sun, 22 Aug 2010 20:57:06 +0100, Phil Hobbs
wrote:

aemeijers wrote:
zzzzzzzzzz wrote:
(snip)
They spent wads of money to
build and maintain them, then junked the entire fleet. It was
noisy and
very fuel inefficient. That forced the fares so high that they
weren't
able to compete with better planes from multiple countries.
What other supersonic airliners are those then?...

Don't read well, do you? The 747 kicked its butt.
747 ain't supersonic. But on a dollar/gallon per passenger mile
basis, it is a whole lot cheaper to run, when anywhere near fully
loaded. In recent years, due to passenger volume being so reduced, a
whole lotta 747s and other jumbos were parked in the desert, in
'preservation pack' status. Airlines switched to the itty-bitty jets
for many routes. Now that volume is picking up again, some jumbos are
being brought back out of storage. At one point, they were gonna
modernize the 747 fleet, but it will probably never happen, because
Boeing would rather sell new planes, and Airbus is nipping at their
heels. But the long delays in the Boeing Dreamliner rampup can be at
least partially blamed on the airlines getting gun-shy. It costs a
lot of money to keep airplanes with a lot of lifespan left sitting in
the desert. Another air disaster or major fuel cost spike, and there
will be multiple airlines going belly-up.
Supersonics only made sense for civilian use for a very tiny niche
market of rich people and businessmen who had to have face time
someplace far away in a hurry. That niche market got even smaller
with the rise of cheap easily available hi-rez video-conferencing
services. A lot of execs don't travel near as much as they used to.
Plus, of course, with the general economic downturn, there are a lot
fewer executives. Either retired or flipping burgers for somebody else.
Absent some technological leap that allows cheap suborbital flights
for the masses, world travel will be slower and more expensive from
here on out.

Plus the externalities, such as having your windows rattle twice a day
(waking the baby, of course) just because some rich nitwit couldn't
wait another couple of hours to get to LA. Anyway, rich nitwits save
more time than that by buying or renting their own subsonic jet, which
goes wherever they want, whenever they want. It's a far more rational
solution (if you can call it that).

There was also a big outcry at the time about the
pollution--apparently folks were worried about damage to the ozone
layer or something, due to inefficient engines spewing crap in the
stratosphere. I'm not sure whether there was anything to that (there
so often isn't, in the environmentalist cosmos), but that and the
sonic booms were what got supersonic flight banned.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Just more symptoms on Not Invented Here syndrome.

Sorry? Where was supersonic flight first achieved, again?

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal
ElectroOptical Innovations
55 Orchard Rd
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
845-480-2058
hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net