Sir Richard Branson set to usher in new era of 'affordable' supersonic flights with [tr]

UK Daily Mail ^ | March 24, 2016 | Georgia Diebelus and Mark Prigg

[C19fan]

Sir Richard Branson is set to order 10 supersonic jets, which the manufacturer claims will herald a new era of 'affordable' supersonic travel. The airline tycoon has confirmed that Virgin has options to buy 10 of the recently revealed supersonic Boom jets, which will be capable of flying at 1,451mph - about 100mph faster than Concorde - and reaching New York from London in three and a half hours. The Boom jet is being built by former Amazon executive Blake Scholl, who is putting a prototype of Boom together in a Colorado aircraft hangar.

[Mastador1]

Does anyone really want to board anything called a Boom Jet? It sounds so ACME you expect the pilot to be named Wile E. Coyote.

[Organic Panic]

Physics are stubborn things. Don’t expect to see these any time soon.

[Raymann]

Actually it did, the reason it shut down was because the air-frames were old and maintenance was becoming very difficult.

http://theadaptivemarketer.com/2012/01/14/a-pricing-lesson-from-the-concorde/

[mountn man]

It was the recession after 9/11 and less demand to travel for business meetings due to email and video conferencing. Most of the Concorde passengers were high-level businessmen and diplomats.

And yet most air travel today is by business travelers.

We're talking a business class product at a business class price.

[The Sons of Liberty]

Not that long ago, ordinary jet travel was only for the well heeled

I'm old enough to remember those days. Now it is like riding the Greyhound used to be, only you had more leg room on the bus.

[Gay State Conservative]

They already do that,don’t they? NYC—Japan ex. (Using Great Circle Route)

Yup,I've done it several times..NYC to Tokyo was about 14 hours...NYC to Hong Kong was exactly 15:55 (I remember commenting that it was just short of 16 hours).

[Gay State Conservative]

The Concorde turned out to be a dangerous design like the Space Shuttle, so it should get some blame.

The maker of the Concorde was warned some years before the crash to fix the problem that eventually caused the crash but they failed to do so.A similar incident,at that time,almost ended in disaster and was what caused the warning to be issued.

[Moonman62]

Good article. It could also explain why more than one startup company is looking at building supersonic jets.

Boeing was going to do it until 911, then they decided to build the 787 instead.