Trump lifts US supersonic flight ban, says he's 'Making Aviation Great Again' On Friday, President Trump signed an executive order telling the FAA to lift its 52-year ban on supersonic flight over the US and told the FAA to devise a scheme to limit noise pollution from such aircraft. Supersonic flight has been banned over the US for civilian aircraft since 1973 after testing showed the noise it created …
"I imagine 20 billionaires a day flying in and out of San Francisco - each in their own private supersonic jet."
Which they already do, the difference between sub/supersonic in small planes isn't a major one. It will be if someone has money to build a new version of Concorde and deploy those in bulk.
But I seriously doubt that anyone will: Boeing hasn't have the capability and Airbus doesn't have the markets and/or funding: It would cost literally billions to design: Wiki estimates £16 billions in 2023 money for whole Concorde program and building a new now would cost *a lot* more.
There are fat profits in that class of travel, but not enough people who would pay it, as suggested by Concorde.
Weirdly, when Concorde was running it wasn't that profitable for British Airways or Air France. Also the development costs of Concorde were never recovered when Concorde was in operation.
One of the major problems with Concorde was people block booking seats, there were folks that had permanent bookings on Concorde, as in they were paying to ensure they always had a seat on whatever flight was leaving (bonkers, I know). I went on Concorde a couple of times, and it was never full, half full at best...it was half full at best...the tricky part about flying on Concorde was not only the cost of the seat, but also actually finding a seat that hadn't already been booked. It was actually really fucking annoying. You wouldn't know until the day of the flight whether you'd actually get a seat a lot of the time.
Unless supersonic flights can be operated at scale to stop the super rich blocking the service, I don't think supersonic travel is really that interesting. Yeah it was awesome to go on Concorde twice and getting to New York from London that fast never gets old, but ultimately, the cost just wasn't really worth it (not that I was paying of course!).
Finally, the noise...as a kid I grew up under the flight path for Concorde, right next to Heathrow. Yeah it's fucking loud and it does rattle windows...but oddly after a certain amount of time, you get used to it, but it's still mildly annoying if you have guests round and you're trying to speak...the take offs weren't that frequent though with Concorde. I think it was twice a day or something in our direction, so it'd be annoying for about 4 minutes. Twice a day. Doing supersonic at scale...people are going to get suicidal...because if there is a flight once an hour or something, it would be torture.
In my childhood I lived under a flightpath where USAF jets would transit at low level between air bases. My memory is several times per day our teachers would have to pause talking whilst they cleared
over. I still miss seeing and hearing those F1-11 flights, often in pairs.
Same for me with the M6.
It's a constant hum as the cars zoom past about 100 yeards from my house.
You only really notice it when the traffic stops because of an accident.
First lockdown was very, very weird, absolute silence for a few weeks, I could hear mice scurrying in the fields for the first time ever...
> live next to the East Coast Main Line in Newcastle
Where I live there are parallel train lines one street over in either direction and the only time we really notice them after 30 years is when a really heavy train gets the house shaking and rattling.
Could have been worse I guess, HS2 on a viaduct was going to be build alongside one almost at the bottom of our garden!
It's highly unlikely a Vulcan pilot would hit the afterburners. Since the Avro Vulcan didn't have afterburners. That was one of the mods to the Bristol/Rolls-Royce Olympus engines for Concorde (and TSR-2)
You're probably thinking of the famous Vulcan howl, which was caused by air turbulence interactions at the intake for the 2 engines at the wing roots, not afterburners.
Quite a lot of Concorde's regulars were businessfolk in New York who'd use it to hop across the Atlantic for a meeting. The events of 9-11 unfortunately killed off a large percentage of the regular customer base who'd become used to the utility of it and had enough money to pay for it. I think BA made quite good money out of it, more so than Air France. BA's advantage is that a lot of those New Yorkers went to London as it is a very large financial hub, and less so to Paris.
To that customer base, the cost of not being able to hop across the Atlantic would have been pretty high. Things get really wierd in the world of large scale finance. For example, Tomas Bscher (apologies if any mis-spelling of that) bought a McLaren F1 back in the day and used it to commute from Cologne to Frankfurt. He was some hot-shot financier, and I remember reading an article relating how he considered that the price of the car had paid for itself in the time saving he gained on his commute (or at least, that's a good thing to tell the Misses!). It was effectively "free" motoring so far as he was concerned. He famously had a >200mph average speed in that car on his commute.
I fear that, if there's a large scale rise in supersonic airliners, the impact on ATC and airlane congestion could be severe. Concorde required "special" ATC treatment; it couldn't exactly afford to hang around in a stack wait to land, and would anyway have to stack somewhere else (because it burned a lot of fuel to fly slowly). If new supersonics require the same kind of ATC deal, airport capacity is actually going to drop if they're flown in even modest numbers. Whilst the problems of "noise" and "efficiency" might get addressed, what I don't think will change will be the physics of how fast such an airliner has to fly in and around the approaches to airports.
That's why some aircraft were swing-wing.
There would be an argument for Supersonic aircraft landing at airports more remote than major international hubs. The time save would offset the travel time to a major city...or just have express trains etc.
London to New York was 3 hours on Concorde...which is bonkers. Having flown that route on both Concorde and a regular airliner, I can't explain how weird it is to get there in 3 hours. You could have breakfast twice. Which I did, because breakfast in New York is probably the best in the world. The yanks fuck a lot of things up, but breakfast in New York is not one of them.
The last time I took a trip that included Concorde, it was extra weird because we threw in a diversion to Bermuda. So we took off in London, where it was mild (around 10c), landed in New York where it was snowing and freezing cold (probably -2c to -3c), then headed to Bermuda where it was 25c. Then the same thing coming back. We actually cocked up because the forecast for New York was a lot milder...so we didn't have any thick winter clothes...I distinctly remember walking around New York in the snow after getting back from Bermuda wearing a T-Shirt until we found a place to buy a jumper, I'd left my jacket in Bermuda and didn't have a jumper with me. Thankfully I'm Northern, so walking around in the snow with a t-shirt on is tolerable for me (my shorts go on approximately half past February and get packed away roughly quarter to December), but we got some strange looks.
I remember watching Concorde take off from the viewing park at Manchester Airpory in the late 80s / early 90s - by which I mean the beer garden of The Airport Inn, which was lined up exactly with the West end of the runway, where planes would usually land and start their rolls from... I remember the sheer feeling of the reheat screaming, the purple-pink flames jettting out... visceral doesnt begin to describe it. I miss Concorde.
Concorde being a museum piece is the only reson why Nero lifted that ban... Since the only reason why that ban was put in place was because 'Murican plane companies couldn't compete with the British Flair & the French Inventivity mixed together. Tven the Soviet couldn't compete at that time and just stole a set of concorde plan ( not the final version ) and built the Concordsky from them ( and had many issues due to the fact that it wasn't the final set of plans )
The only country looking at civilian supersonic flight right now is 'Murica.
Despite all the persistent rumours, while it's almost certain that the Soviets did have Concorde plans (and they frequently had correspondence with the Concorde design team), the Tu-144 structurally and aerodynamically shares basically nothing in common with it and it's nothing like a copy of Concorde. Not even from early plans. It's outward similarities are more of a result of convergent evolution (similar sets of requirements leading to similar design outcomes). However there's a lot of differences in the design and they've been designed for entirely different flight regimes. Some individual design mechanics might have been the result of solutions to the same problem being copied though (like the droop snoot). Concorde was designed to fly at comparatively low altitudes (yes really), primarily over water, for ocean crossings. Because of this it had a smaller wing plan and lower cruise thrust design (allowing supercruise without afterburners). Tu-144 on the other hand was designed to fly over land, required higher altitude flight and thus larger wing plan and subsequently higher engine thrust. Since engine design (and everything to do with the engines from intake shockwave management to engine management) was lagging western designs this meant that Tu-144 required comparatively larger engines and afterburners to cruise at Mach with all the downsides that brings (massively increased fuel burn and bone shattering noise and vibration mainly) which in turn meant more design compromises in terms of size and aerodynamics. Tu-144s ability to carry more passengers was mainly from the fact it simply HAD to be bigger to carry the fuel. Being able to carry a few extra seats basically just came as a consequence of that.
Not entirely stupid strategically - It fuels the right-wing Culture War agenda, delivering the anti-left hatefest and cups of libtard tears which MAGA morons cheer as "Winning!".
It is populism at its finest, with Trump riding "if Dems don't like it, it must be a good thing" sentiment from America's dumbest half.
It has three benefits for Trump; keeping MAGA loyal, fooling them into believing "he did everything he promised to do" when Trump failed to deliver what he actually promised in his first term, and it distracts everyone from the parallel agenda of turning America into a "third-world shithole", run by and for the oligarchs and billionaire elite, while everyday Americans become impoverished and oppressed wage slaves.
It's the perfect path for getting turkeys to vote for Christmas - or Thanksgiving over there.
"The Art of the Steal"
If my arithmetic is right, 52 years ago is 1973, which was during the Administration of that noted Leftist Liberal whacko, Richard Nixon.1
Go figure.
______________
Unfortunately, that is what "opposition parties" in democracies seem to think they are supposed to do these days, even when "the other party" comes up with a policy that benefits everyone.
It's seen a lot in UK politics these days, where the other party is never willing to say "excellent idea, we'll support that". Though I don't think any party has come up with a sensible policy for a long, long time.
No, the role of the opposition is to hold the government to account. If a policy is manifestly sensible then they -should- support it, but of course no one agrees on what "sensible" is. And quite often this can lead to parties contradicting each other; for instance, the Tories opposed Labour's winter fuel allowance changes, and then criticised them mostly reversing the changes! To add to it, whilst in government, they *supported* WFA means testing. There isn't any consistency (and this goes for both sides) because it's not politically beneficial to say "yeah, the other side is correct about this".
By the time this next generation of jets is ready for commercial flight, saner heads will be back in the Oval Office, and hopefully the houses of congress, and it won't matter what trump has signed as all his idiocy will have been reversed.
>it won't matter what trump has signed as all his idiocy will have been reversed.
Except all the lobbyists will claim that reversing this will costs millions of jobs and threaten to tie the administration up in lawsuits for years while the rules remain, until planes are flaying and there is no political will to ban them.
"Except all the lobbyists will claim that reversing this will costs millions of jobs and threaten to tie the administration up in lawsuits for years "
It doesn't matter that all of those workers are doing something that impacts health and well-being, it's still a loss of jobs (other than the needed culling of lawyers).
I was out in the field yesterday and it looks like the vast majority of billboards in the area are for ambulance chasers.
Not really, at least not yet.
The temperature gradient means the speed of sound is lower in lower temperatures higher up and faster on the ground.
So the test flight at Mach 1.12 @ 35000ft resulted in a speed that would not have been supersonic on ground level with an 80°C higher temperature..
Therefore the supersonic shock wave generated in this test was no supersonic shock wave anymore when it reached the warmer air near ground level.
It still needs to be demonstrated, if the "up-bending" of shock waves, as suggested by Boom, in fact works for speeds up to their design target, Mach 1.7, as the gain from Mach 0.93 of today's commercial airliners to just Mach 1.1 would be too small to have any meaningful impact on travel times.
All Boom need to do is demonstrate supersonic at a low enough premium over subsonic, Airline marketing will do the rest, it doesn't need anything 'meaningful' just use the "Ooo! YOU can fastest in the world, for only $15 more" line.
Correct, but a low premium will probably not be achievable.
Much higher material/quality requirements to the air frame, higher maintenance cost due to higher stress on all parts, nearly doubled fuel consumption - combined with a narrow body holding a much lower number of seats will IMHO result in a very "exclusive" price point at 300-500% the price of a sub-sonic ticket..
The cost is obviously going to make it business class only. If it has the legs to do most the Asian Pacific then there could be demand that makes a trip to Shanghai and there and back in a day rather than 2-3 days for a CEO of Apple
True, there will be at least *some* demand. But enough to sell for haw many airframes?
Are you willing to bet revenue will surpass development cost?
That has not even worked for some recent lower volume models from Boeing and Airbus...
Well, the project goes ahead and aircraft get built if the optimists bankrolling the development cost can be persuaded that there's a market.
If they don't sell enough aircraft to pay for the development then it's a bit late, investors are left holding the tab. Of course, certification to fly rules mean somebody still has to be willing to act as design authority, and with the maker (probably) having gone bust the aircraft can't fly unless somebody else wants to take a whole bag of risks.
It probably can't financially work if the only market is commercial aircraft. The decrease in flight time is overwhelmed by the total trip time when you count the trip to the airport, security theater, waiting, boarding, taxiing, then taxiing, deboarding, and waiting at baggage claim, and trip from the airport. Maybe it makes sense for long haul e.g. LA to Tokyo but again it will be much more expensive than regular aircraft.
Yes "everything is business class" but the business class you get on that aircraft will cost more than first class on a regular aircraft! Even if it was able to match first class pricing if I was going to spend $10K on that LA to Tokyo round trip and had a choice between "arrive a few hours earlier" or "have lie flat seats and an on board shower so I can sleep and arrived fresh and rested" I'm not gonna have a problem with arriving a few hours later. I think most would agree.
The true market for it is people with 9+ digit wealth who will see owning their own supersonic private jet as a status symbol, and people with 8 digit wealth who might in some cases be willing to pay the upcharge to rent a supersonic jet instead of a regular one from NetJets or similar rental/fractional ownership schemes.
The amount of time you spend in the air is not as big of a problem today as it was when Concorde was brand new, because satellite connectivity mean you can be in VR meetings while you're in the air so companies aren't likely to spring for supersonic travel for any of their employees. They'll just have them leave earlier and work in transit.
They might be able to smooth over some of the wait times giving them a separate TSA line but they can't do anything about how long it takes to get to the airport and all the waiting around for ATC clearance to pull away from the gate, taxiing and waiting behind other planes and all that, or when you land and there isn't an available gate so you just chill on the tarmac for a while waiting for another plane to pull out.
The only way to really avoid all that is to fly private, and then only because you are flying out of an airport without all those security restrictions so you can just pull your limo out onto the tarmac right next to the plane, and it has only a few takeoffs an hour at most so there's never a line of planes waiting to take off (though you may still have to wait for ATC clearance if its a busy airspace, flying private doesn't help there)
Which was my point - supersonic aircraft will be much more attractive for private planes, because they can get the full benefit of shorter travel time, though I suspect it will mostly be about status. If you're a "poor" (in relative terms) who can't afford to upgrade from a G550 to a Boom you'll be looked down upon by the other 1% of %1 ers.
It would be ironic that even if Trump gets to keep his UAE hand-me-down palace plane he still won't be part of the in crowd among the super rich because they'll all have supersonic jets!
Trump won't be able to afford keeping the 747 in operation after he leaves office if he has to pay for it himself so that "hand me down palace plane" is going to be a costly drain on public resources as it sits on the tarmac somewhere with nowhere to go and being of no use to anyone. Trumps just never going to transfer it to his private property or pay for its upkeep if he ever leaves office. 747s are very expensive to operate even as aircraft go and using one as a private jet is a fools errand even for the ultra wealthy (Musk or Bezos levels rich). Trump isn't even close to that level of rich.
"" security theater, waiting, boarding, taxiing, then taxiing, deboarding, and waiting at baggage claim"
You'd be surprised how all those could be speeded up or eliminated for a premium service."
Yup. Private plane, small field, literally 10 minutes from street to air and half of that was pre-flight checks for pilots. (Domestic flight though, no customs involved.)
Airports just don't want to do that because it costs money to them. Any queue is a literal cost saving move in an airport.
I flew a 172 from Bodmin to Leeds Bradford and back yesterday to save a friend 9 hours by public transport. The landing fee at a very empty Leeds Bradford airport was a reassuringly expensive £102. Still, we did get a very nice cup of coffee.
> It probably can't financially work if the only market is commercial aircraft. The decrease in flight time is overwhelmed by the total trip time when you count the trip to the airport, security theater, waiting, boarding, taxiing, then taxiing, deboarding, and waiting at baggage claim, and trip from the airport. Maybe it makes sense for long haul e.g. LA to Tokyo but again it will be much more expensive than regular aircraft.
A lot of that stuff goes away when you travel business though. You can get things like TSA PreCheck (minimal security based on a background check, you skip the line), you'll have a limo to the airport, express check in to board quickly and you can bet the premium airlines will be paying to get the best slots so they depart quickly. Money makes a lot of problems go away.
For economy class yeah, it almost certainly won't make sense, but Boom have been pushing their product as a business class aircraft only.
"If it has the legs to do most the Asian Pacific then there could be demand that makes a trip to Shanghai and there and back in a day rather than 2-3 days for a CEO of Apple"
There would have to be a burning need to Tim to be in Shanghai as fast as possible or he'd just take a plush corporate jet. There's the advantage of more airports to choose from and not having to travel with others. It's not like he or Apple doesn't have the money. There's something to be said for the plane waiting on you to get to the airport and not being irradiated and groped on the way to the gate.
I just watched a video on YT (Jeb Brooks) where he and his wife took a small jet between LA and Las Vegas. The tickets were ~$800 each one-way, but a nice lounge with snacks, no TSA! That's a route that can be on-offer for $30 (no luggage, no assigned cage, no free bevie) from mainstream airlines. Parking is more. I couldn't say if parking was available at the charter location.
Tim HAS to take a private jet. The Apple Board has decreed it. It's for "security reasons", or so they say.
Last time I noticed, his was a Gulfstream G650ER, where the ER stands for extended range.
It'll do the trip from SillyConValley to Shanghai in one hop. Takes just under 11 hours at 516 knots. (Max cruise is 616 knots, but that eats fuel).
Roughly, it's $0.75 million/year fixed (whether it flies or not), plus ~$5,000/hour actual flight costs. Not that Tim ever sees the bill, of course.
"It still needs to be demonstrated, if the "up-bending" of shock waves, as suggested by Boom, in fact works for speeds up to their design target, Mach 1.7, as the gain from Mach 0.93 of today's commercial airliners to just Mach 1.1 would be too small to have any meaningful impact on travel times."
Where it would make an impact is the very long routes. Concorde didn't have the range for those. It also was before all of the security theatre. For shorter flights, travel time is swamped out by all of the not-flying faff. It it's 4 hours from front door to destination on a regular flight, chopping that down to 3h30m for 4x the ticket price won't have value for most people.
The time between plane design and flight keeps increasing over the last 1-2 decades, with only Airbus and Embraer having consistent orders and revenue, supersonic flight will not change that, because unless you have a major shift in engineering, the complexity of the plane is much higher, not lower.
So unless you convince major airlines to buy this jet, it's going to be Concorde all over again (except in China), where only the very rich will fly this, but it won't survive a volatile market or economy.
The A320, the most succesful jet in production, has a cruise speed of ~800kph.
A fast train can cruise ~250-300kph.
The massive overhead of 2x 2-3 hours in each airport just to board means that you lose the advantage of having double the speed and no intermediate stop for a lot of destinations..
So instead of launching a startup for billionaire passengers, if you streamline the airports to check in as fast as trains (not impossible), then you've dramatically reduced the travel time.
If you want to go green, then invest in long distance high speed trains between major hubs, while optimizing the short distance connections.
For trans-continental you need air travel, for continental the current necessity is mostly the result of poor infrastructure planning.
For example, flying from Glasgow to Spain is cheaper than a train Manchester - London if time it right.
In Italy a Ryanair-like startup for the high speed train network was so succesful that the government had to step in to protect the national airline for fear it would take too much of a hit on the North/South trips, so it can be done, and fairly quickly as well if you have consistent, well thought out planning and execution.
> , if you streamline the airports to check in as fast as trains (not impossible), then you've dramatically reduced the travel time.
Absolutely correct but not something the airports will ever pursue. They want bored passengers hanging around for hours to sell price-inflated “duty free”* goods to. Train stations don’t have duty free shops, so they want you in and out as quickly as possible,
* which for some reason turn out to be priced higher than the same goods online, or even on the high street.
if you streamline the airports to check in as fast as trains
If you're flying First Class, this is already done (sans luggage)
They can whisk you straight from the car park or private taxi rank to the plane if you want. I've flown business class once, and it would have been easy - though as I didn't expect to ever do so again, I wanted to use that lounge!
Heck, even cattle class is actually much quicker than claimed. I've run into Heathrow airport and onto a plane in under 20 minutes. Absolutely not recommended as it was highly stressful!
Luggage takes a little longer as it needs scanning and storing, but send that ahead and you're done.
With the right status at the right airport, even checking in with luggage is not a problem. Because there's no massive queue and your luggage doesn't end up in the luggage 'warehouse' in the main terminal, your luggage will end up with a nice priority tag, in a priority bin, being taken to the plane from the 'special status' terminal at the last minute as you board, to make sure the bin your luggage is in is in fact off-loaded first. :-)
I'll just point at certain carriers flying from the Middle East and a certain carrier flying from the country of Wurst und Bier. ;-)
"The massive overhead of 2x 2-3 hours in each airport just to board means that you lose the advantage of having double the speed and no intermediate stop for a lot of destinations.."
I'm sure the people behind this are aware, and as a consequence I very much doubt this aircraft will be using cattle class boarding processes - if they can they'll use the private jet terminals where money means there's no delays to the passengers.
"if you streamline the airports to check in as fast as trains (not impossible), then you've dramatically reduced the travel time."
It could be done, but why would airports do that when lower terminal transit time means lower retail and catering income to the airport?
>It could be done, but why would airports do that when lower terminal transit time means lower retail and catering income to the airport?
Because the Heathrow, JFK and HKG know that the customers of this aren't hanging around duty free for 3 hours buying cigs - they will make up for it with increased landing fees
"if they can they'll use the private jet terminals where money means there's no delays to the passengers."
They can't. TSA screening is required for aircraft capable of seating 30 (I think it's 30) or more passengers. Not how many are booked, how many seats. Their own private and separate gate would be extremely expensive. Airports have limited space and gates are costly. This is why charter flights often share a couple of gates rather than have one of their own.
With the right impetus, the TSA screening processes and private gates are not a problem. We know LAX already does a tailored service for celebrities of a certain status where they do their TSA clearance in a different area, and are then driven to their flight. Similar things exist at other airports to ensure that the highest-status fliers don't mingle with smelly and grubby hoi polloi. It'll be a problem for the likes of Heathrow who don't seem to think beyond the end of their noses, so... ;-)
"The A320, the most succesful jet in production, has a cruise speed of ~800kph.
A fast train can cruise ~250-300kph."
A train is a much better mode if the terrain/distance work out. Spanning oceans/seas/lakes and difficult terrain can put hard limits on trains. The California HSR project still hasn't worked out how to get out of the Los Angeles basin and into the central valley. There's a giant fault line to cross that moves all the time and mountains to get over/around. There a coastal train route (Coast Starlight) that's really slow and runs once a day in each direction to go from LA to Seattle and passes close to San Fran where one can switch trains to get into the city. A project is under way to build a HSR route from Southern California to Las Vegas (again). They® say it will be ready in 2028, but they haven't started building it yet and there is a whopping steep pass to go over that swamped with freight trains on existing lines. Getting all the way to LA isn't sorted yet so people will either have to take a commuter rail train to the station or drive. On a Friday or Sunday, the train will be the better method, but a standard train would be sufficient to watch all of the stopped traffic from. An express service with no level crossings and not sharing tracks with freight would be far less expensive and just as useful. Terminating at the Las Vegas airport would also be much better since there's lots of transportation options there (shuttles, taxis, car hire). LV could even extend the monorail to the airport and F what the taxi driver's union demands.
At least California HSR (from Bakersfield up to San Fran) is *being* built, although there they also still have no idea which way they'll take the train into the city, and the LA to Bakersfield connection is still way up in the air.
The Brightline thing (which you described) is interesting... Brightline's made quite the waves in Florida with their train there, so... hooray! Amtrak is hamstrung by the fact that they rely on federal funding (Washington to Boston on the Acela is not enough to make money), but the private operators can probably pick and choose what they want to do.
"At least California HSR (from Bakersfield up to San Fran) is *being* built, although there they also still have no idea which way they'll take the train into the city, and the LA to Bakersfield connection is still way up in the air."
Things are being built and the current plan it to open a section between Bakersfield and Merced first. I have my doubts that they could sell enough tickets to make running that pair once per day. One plan to get from Bakersfield to LA is via Palmdale and using the Tehachapi Loop to get out of the central valley. I've visited that once as the "loop" is really an interesting solution to gaining altitude. I actually visited twice since the first time I found out that the tracks are closed one day each week for maintenance. It's used heavily by freight trains so it gets a lot of wear and isn't electrified. There's also a bunch of tunnels along with single tracking over the segment. That part gets a train from the central valley to the Antelope Valley with another windy segment that's used by commuter rail currently. Amtrak could run a standard train several times per day from LA to Bakersfield on that route, but I expect the shorter bus route will nearly always be faster. Google maps has a driven route an hour quicker going from LA Union Station directly vs driving via Tehachapi. Traffic, accidents and freight train delays would all be factors along with the rail route being closed one day each week.
Um, outside military jets, I'm having a hard time remembering _any_ supersonic planes made by US companies, nor any commercial services other than (UK/French) Concorde.
Which made for BA perhaps three quarters of a billion quid over its lifetime, and left the UK and French governments with a two and a half billion development cost.
Political machinations were very much one of the hurdles for Concorde. Environmentalists were one problem, but the biggest was the PANY (Port Authority of NY, who owned JFK at the time). They banned Concorde on noise grounds until BA and Air France proved that Concorde was quieter on approach and departure than PANY made it out to be, and historical accounts also mention that BA, AF, and the manufacturers worked a lot on approach and departure procedures to make sure noise was not an issue.
Washington DC (well, Virginia) didn't have such qualms and happily let the jet fly into Dulles. Braniff funnily enough did a Concorde service from Texas to Washington (and switching crews and registrations for onward flights to London and Paris), but sadly that was subsonic but still very much appreciated. Singapore Airlines had a deal with BA with a technical stop in Bahrain for fuel and did their flight in 9 hours, and Air France did the same to Rio with a stop in Dakar (Senegal). The Rio flight was actually the first commercial flight for Concorde. :-)
"BA, AF, and the manufacturers worked a lot on approach and departure procedures to make sure noise was not an issue."
That applied at the London end as well. When we lived in the SE we would see ordinary Heathrow air traffic overhead but the only time I saw Concorde in flight was from Kew.
"They banned Concorde on noise grounds until BA and Air France proved that Concorde was quieter on approach and departure than PANY made it out to be"
If that's true I'd hate to know how noisy they made it out to be. Back in 1980 the Concorde would be seen relatively low in the skies east of Heathrow, and once I was under the flight path, possibly near Richmond or Kew, when it came in on final approach. Well, it was like an earthquake and a hurricane arrived together. Unbelievable noise.
It was a beautiful plane to see banking over Norbiton, but I'd have hated to have lived under the path where it took off.
For PANY I believe Concorde did an over-water approach to runway 31L, so the communities of Rockaway and Long Island would only hear the noise for a short time. During the trials they found that Concorde on approach was 3 or so decibels louder than the 707 at the time (but we know decibels are not a linear measurement), and coming in to land on 31L (which is the longest runway JFK has) allowed the pilots to use less reverse thrust and roll out over the full length of the runway.
The same happened on departure... Full reheat to get off the ground was a ground-shaker and the noise would echo over to Rockaway. But immediately after take-off (and wheel stowage) Concorde would execute an impressive bank left over Jamaica Bay to head out, which meant Brooklyn was spared the racket. London did not have the same luxury. :-)
And of course, because it hasn’t crossed the Orange Moron’s mind, he’ll be kicking his toys out of his pram when the rest of the world doesn’t allow his new beautiful jets into their airspace because of all the obvious reasons
The guy has the IQ of a turnip, he just assumes the US is the best at everything. You don't start a trade war with the entire world at once if you don't have a deluded view of how important the US is to the rest of the world vs how important the rest of the world is to the US.
@Neil Barnes
"Um, outside military jets, I'm having a hard time remembering _any_ supersonic planes made by US companies, nor any commercial services other than (UK/French) Concorde."
It sounds like a perfectly fine ban to remove then. Either it doesnt have any effect as the US isnt interested and this is one less checkbox for regulators to have listed, or it removes a ban which causes development in the US.
"Um, outside military jets, I'm having a hard time remembering _any_ supersonic planes made by US companies, nor any commercial services other than (UK/French) Concorde."
Breaking the sound barrier is a huge amount of money and fuel. A Cessna Citation will get pretty close to super sonic and it can fly at something like 45,000ft so it's above passenger jets. The Gulfstream G800 goes about as fast, but can go much further. Stopping for fuel would stretch a trip time more than flying a bit slower and not needing to stop.
Enough with this "trump thinks this, trump thinks that" rhetoric! I see this far too much. It's disingenuous and, frankly, plain wrong.
Trump does not "think", at least in the same sense as you or I. It only repeats noises it has heard in the past, a bit like an old AI model from a few years ago. It's just sounds, nothing more.
I know but "is under the impression that" is a bit long winded.
Then we have a philosophical recursion problem: does he think that he thinks? Because he really does seem to believe the utter garbage that he's spouting even if he later contradicts his previous utterances.
Trump races to fix a big mistake: DOGE fired too many people
“They wanted to show they were gutting the government, but there was no thought about what parts might be worth keeping,” said one FDA staffer who was fired and rehired. “Now it feels like it was all just a game to them.”
Pretty much a "numbers" game.
“They wanted to show they were gutting the government, but there was no thought about what parts might be worth keeping,”
Does anyone still realize what "gutting" actually does to the "gutted"?
Spoiler, if you gutt the government, you don't need rehiring anymore.
"Were they rehired at a higher salary? Oh please tell me that they were!"
I doubt it. They probably had no luck in finding other employment and jumped at getting their old job back as the same salary. Many government jobs pay via a schedule and positions will only be eligible for a certain range as well as an employee with a certain amount of time in service being assigned a pay/benefits packet based on that. There's no merit consideration so if you are making the most your position will pay, you have to move to something else that allows for higher salary categories.
We don't need supersonic flight any more than we need cheese in a can. It's lazy and wasteful of resources.
As a species, we need to rethink our need to always be somewhere else. Yes, it needs to happen. No, it probably doesn't need to happen as much as it even does now. And it certainly doesn't need to happen in 2.5 hours rather than 6 hours. I mean think about it, does it *really* matter how long it takes to get from London to New York? Do we really need in-person meetings when a video call will do *most* of the time? I have a sneaking suspicion that it would make more sense to spend £5000 on better video conferencing equipment than on a first class flight.
I'm not exactly an environmentalist but it just doesn't make sense to start developing faster planes, much like it doesn't make sense to make bigger and bigger trucks. Oh...
"And it certainly doesn't need to happen in 2.5 hours rather than 6 hours. I mean think about it, does it *really* matter how long it takes to get from London to New York?"
I'm not defending the idea, but actually it would matter for those who think they're important enough and place a very high value on their time. The CEOs of the US top 350 firms have an average salary of around $20m. That's around $10k per hour. Note as well that it's not just the travel, it's whether the total trip ends up being a second or third day.
I'm afraid I'm a confirmed cattle class flier myself, ideally on an A380.
"The CEOs of the US top 350 firms have an average salary of around $20m. That's around $10k per hour. Note as well that it's not just the travel, it's whether the total trip ends up being a second or third day."
At that point it makes even more sense that they fly on a private jet where there isn't the faffing about in the airport and the airplane is set up with internet/comms and has space for that person to take an assistant and spread out to get work done. Even in first class on most upscale airlines, that's not possible. Perhaps not as convenient as being in their own office, it can be good enough that important tasks don't have to be left behind. Aside from that, those flights can fit the executives needs and might be overnight so they can get some sleep and arrive without really missing any work time.
"I have a sneaking suspicion that it would make more sense to spend £5000 on better video conferencing equipment than on a first class flight."
I agree with arguments over how some things are better done face to face. When that's the case, it makes sense to try and get more done and gather all of the people that need to meet in one place. If plans can be made for that, they can be made to do it two days hence rather than in 5 hours.
If I'm going to attend a trade show, I will get meetings set up with as many of my vendors and customers that will be there as I can to make the most of the trip. To travel a whole day to meet with one is much less efficient. Quadruple the cost and it's really bonkers.
We don't need supersonic flight any more than we need cheese in a can.
But, as with cheese in a can, there is a market for it.
Without that basic detail, nobody is going to invest anyway and it appears there is plenty demand.
However, the Chinese have been busy with this as well so US companies will face competition - expect a lot of lies and tariffs appearing there soon.
"... no American manufacturer had a product to compete with Concorde."
As they say, they couldn't "close the business model". It turns out there wasn't room for one so if it was well known that Concorde would be going forward, it made no sense for somebody such as Boeing, who didn't see a profit, to spend any more time/money on the project.
The Concorde's a mere 50 years old. Its fundamental problem was that it wasn't American. Its secondary problem was that it outperformed just about every military plane we had -- and still have -- in our arsenal.
So now we've finally got around to building one so suddenly all the arguments for banning supersonic flight from the continental US have evaporated. Predictable. For those who think that its likely to be an ecological or financial disaster I'd say that you're probably looking at the wrong market. This won't be a plane for plebs. Its a plane for celebs. (We have 737MAX styke cattle trucks for ordinary people.)
"We have 737MAX styke cattle trucks for ordinary people"
Or the Airbus A320 for those who subscribe to the 'if it's a Boeing, I ain't going' mentality. But yes, you are right, I remember a report from a test pilot for an early Concorde who claimed that it was like piloting a fighter jet, the sheer acceleration when the afterburners cut in....! But yes, any sort of SST will be limited to a tiny percentage of flyers so it's not going to make any sort of impact on the ecology of the planet.
"Its fundamental problem was that it wasn't American."
I do recall at this time there was a theory that the US banned continental flights because they could not stand the idea of a non US company doing something they couldn't. I also recall seeing news reports of people gathering at, JFK maybe?, watching Concorde landings and saying it was one of the most beautiful things they had seen!
Shame really.
"watching Concorde landings and saying it was one of the most beautiful things they had seen!"
And heard and felt. At one point in my early career I worked at an office near Heathrow, and as impressive as Concorde was, it was one noisy bastard.
Fun fact: That office was one of the engineering offices for Hawker Aircraft Ltd, and had walls three feet thick to mitigate bomb damage.
I used to work at Heathrow. Although Concorde was noisy, it definitely had competitors during take-off! I remember waiting to catch the bus into the central terminal area and I'd often see Concorde take off and as it flew off into the distance I'd be left listening to all the car alarms blaring away. There were some other aircraft that were as bad if not worse during takeoff (though I can't remember which types).
There were some other aircraft that were as bad if not worse during takeoff (though I can't remember which types)There were some other aircraft that were as bad if not worse during takeoff (though I can't remember which types)
Boeing 707s and other early jets that had four turbo-jet engines with no or very small bypass fan. The loudest aircraft, including Concorde, could overload eardrums.
Of course, for loud, the atlantic coast of Florida says hold my cape.
One of the morning flights from Belfast to Heathrow used to land just before the departure time for the Concorde to JFK. In those days Belfast passengers had to deplane via the steps and go though special security, no airbridges straight into the terminal for us.
If a Concorde started its take-off roll as we were walking across the apron everybody stopped to watch, to the great irritation of the ground staff yelling "keep moving, you can't stop there" at us. Never worked, the sight, sound and ground-shaking feel of Concorde was just too much to resist. It was especially impressive when it followed a 747 down the same runway. The Jumbo lumbered along, looking like it was never going to get up enough speed, and would finally crawl into the air well down the runway. A few minutes later the Concorde would appear, accelerating like a bat out of hell, and after less than half the runway it just lifted its nose and soared up into the sky far more steeply than any other plane. Magic.
"Concorde landings and saying it was one of the most beautiful things they had seen!"
At one time that could be said of any Aeroflot landing (and a good few Olympic..)
Oddly I never found the sight of the Concorde attractive; The aircraft was like the picture of young anorexic woman - potentially attractive but subliminally, intrinsically repulsive.
"Its secondary problem was that it outperformed just about every military plane we had -- and still have -- in our arsenal."
Sort of. In straight and level flight, they can go really fast but burn fuel like a boss. They still have to land somewhere and a fighter jet that can go almost as fast can launch a missile that goes much faster which is how they'd splash the target anyway. The old adage is that while you might be able to go faster than a police car, you won't go faster than Motorola (radio). What's the mpg of a Veyron on the Autobahn? 4? I think that going flat out, they have about 20 minutes of fuel with a full tank.
In straight and level flight, they can go really fast but burn fuel like a boss
One of the many technical achievements of Concorde was super-cruise: The engines could run efficiently at Mach 2 and didn't need afterburners. The afterburners were just to get Concorde up to speed. After that, they were turned off.
"Its secondary problem was that it outperformed just about every military plane we had -- and still have -- in our arsenal."
There's a story related to that, specifially this one:
https://luxurylaunches.com/travel/the-only-picture-of-the-concorde-flying-at-mach-2.php
Though I despise his fellow travellers, Vivek Ramaswamy said it best: Americans have embraced mediocrity and despise the striver.
This desire to revisit old glories in aerospace and rockets is just a symptom of the disease.
"Though I despise his fellow travellers, Vivek Ramaswamy said it best: Americans have embraced mediocrity and despise the striver."
Wasn't the UK post just sold to a foreign entity? It's rather sad when a county can't even deliver its own mail.
"Postal mail is increasingly obsolete."
Letters, yes. Packages, no. The post in the US is very handy for small parcels. For me to use UPS, I have to drive 20 minutes and while Dollar General acts as a collection point for pre-labelled FedEx shipments, I've noticed that there can be long delays based on the things sent to me that way.
The really big user of the post for letters is government. I can't count how many times I've had email-delivered things get cancelled when my host has gone off-line and I have to go through and re-confirm a bunch of accounts. I know of two things I've never been able to get reconnected. Mail always winds up in my PO box (eventually). It's been a dog's life since I've received some sort of scam letter in the mail so I am far more confident in the official notices I get in the mail. I'll check anyway, but I'll do that right away as they have always been real. I'd also prefer to get any checks in the mail vs. direct deposit. Once you sign up for direct deposit, they can also reach in and take money out if there is some sort of inquiry. I recall a story of somebody that had money removed from their bank account by the IRS with a M$ worthy cryptic code that nobody at the IRS could figure out. The person was very confident that were due that tax refund, but the question is how long it will take to convince the IRS that they've made a mistake? Good luck with that.
The Felon in Chief orders the EPA to reclasofy classify lead as gold, and the Army Corps of Engineers to classify all flood water as "dry."
I've had a supersonic overflight of my house (fighter jet emergency response to Washington DC airspace incursion) and it was like a nearby explosion. Until the actual "boom" can be mitigated this is idiotic.
"fighter jet emergency response to Washington DC airspace incursion) and it was like a nearby explosion"
Fighters are noisy as they don't have any noise limits and no-one is interested in the amount of noise they make.
Assuming passenger planes are as noisy is a very poor assumption.
makes ozone optional again?
My ancient memory seems to recall that the main reason for SSTs losing their lustre was the detrimental effects on the Earth's ozone layer of their exhaust emissions at the altitudes at which they would typically fly.
I think at the time growing circumpolar holes in the ozone layer had just frightened the world into to agreeing to abandon CFCs. I think preemptively removing the threat to the ozone from SST emissions long before SSTs were common, carried little political risk at that time.
Also I think the US SST was spec'd much faster than the Concorde and was looking to cost mind numbingly more orders of magnitude than originally estimated so a pretext for running away from the project was welcome.
Numpty Trumpty is unlikely to get his head around the idea of UV and ozone layers; likely lumping the lot together with "woke climate change lies" and in any case why should Americans care if recalcitrant Greenlanders and Canadians are frazzled from the UV from a new open MAGA ozone hole.
Alaska? I did say this Bozo was a Numpty.
I'm fairly certain that the Ozone holes were discovered during the International Geophysical Year (1956-1957?).
The CFC connection was made later. Mid seventies or thereabouts?
Mainstream hand wringing started even later probably around mid eighties.
Of course, the more things you measure the more data you have.
"Federalising" the California National Guard and sending them into Los Angles is the next step to implanting the fear needed to support your prediction. A President intent on sowing division in the country rather then unity.
Escape from New York II:
Secret Service Agent: "Hey man, the Presidents plane went down. If you go rescue him, we'll make you a free man"
Snake Pliskin: "Fuck off, I'm not risking my life for that Orange Turd"
The US right now reads like the back story of any number of sci fi novels set in a post USA world
Bobiverse version -
"In 2036, the US elected as President a fundamentalist Christian named Andrew Handel with extreme right-wing policies. Among these policies, Handel tried to ban the election of non-Christians to any government post and tried to abolish the constitutional separation of church and state. In addition, Handel's cabinet was stocked based on religious conviction and not necessarily actual qualification. The government was focused entirely on developing and enforcing far-right legislation."
1984 of course
Starship Troopers
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