Does supersonic commercial aviation still make any sense?
this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2025
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If you are a billionaire I guess.
Yeah this just smells like Gilded Age II to me, but it's not like I'm up to speed (har har) with supersonic aviation.
It never did.
Previously with the noise you couldn’t fly over land and the inefficiency you couldn’t cross the Pacific Ocean. Complex technology meant excessive maintenance costs. It was only good for Atlantic routes, was very expensive and always lost money.
Newer technology hopes to make commercial sense for the first time. Less noise opens land routes. Better efficiency opens more ocean routes. Better engineering reduces maintenance costs. More scalability allows the option for business jets up to larger passenger jets. Maybe it will make sense this time. Maybe it will just be a new way for billionaires to consider themselves above the rest of us
Oh yeah I think I just phrased that a bit wrong, what I meant was more along the lines of "Has it started making any sense yet?" but my English is failing me