Supersonic Planes are Coming Back (And This Time, They Might Work)

this video was made possible by curiosity stream watch the companion video to this one and loads more exclusive content by signing up for the curiosity stream nebula bundle deal at curiositystream.com wendover the story of supersonic passenger travel is long and tumultuous nearly everyone has heard some version of why concord failed it was certainly the epitome of a technology ahead of its time but the true story of why it failed or rather more accurately why it retired is more nuanced than the popular narrative of an overzealous overly extravagant inflexible aircraft there are degrees to which that narrative is true but what you don't often hear is this concorde was profitable a 747 the flagship of any subsonic fleet during the reign of concord required a gallon of fuel to carry one passenger 80 miles or 1 liter for 34 kilometers assuming a full load meanwhile concorde required roughly one gallon to carry one passenger 17 miles or one liter per seven kilometers clearly a quite decisive difference concord was vastly less efficient than the aircraft that is today fading away due to its inefficiency but the story doesn't end there jet fuel currently costs about 1.68 cents per gallon therefore the fuel bill on a new york to london 747 flights per passenger is about 73 and a half dollars not a dramatic amount relative to ticket prices similarly concord burning about 206 gallons or 780 liters of jet fuel to carry a passenger across the atlantic would burn 346 dollars in fuel that's a staggeringly small number compared to its inflation-adjusted ticket price of roughly 16 000 round trip both air france and british airways the two operators of the aircraft paid a small sum for the aircraft relative to its multi-billion dollar development cost bankrolled by the french and british governments maintenance and operational costs were certainly high but certainly not at the level that some autopsies of the aircraft's demise make them out to be so altogether both airlines were able to turn a tidy profit across the aircraft's three decades of supersonic service but there were other issues part of it was versatility with a meager 4 500 mile 7 200 kilometer range and a brutally loud sonic boom that forced nearly every government to ban it from flying over the speed of sound over land there were very very few routes on which the aircraft could be used effectively compounding those issues its seats were sold slightly above first class prices around 16 000 round trip inflation adjusted and there are very very few routes that can sustain that level of first class capacity between eos slavial max jet silver jet british airways and others there's a long history of airlines attempting to operate all business class flights between london or paris and new york and yet every single one of these eventually failed concord essentially involved trying to operate all first-class flights for context in a non-coveted impacted schedule british airways flies a mere 98 first-class seats between london and new york each day with concord's double daily new york schedule british airways was operating some 200 first class seats in addition to dozens more on their regular subsonic services that's an enormous amount of first class capacity that this route the most valuable in the world can't even support today so it's no surprise that it couldn't decades ago therefore many concord services operated with more seats empty than full and yet british airways still turned a profit their typical 50 to 60 load factor worked great from a financial perspective and some back of the napkin math estimates that they could have broken even with as little as a 35 load factor in fact it's possible that they stumbled into the right sail strategy the one they had been missing all along in the aircraft's final days after it was announced that concord would be retired but while it was still flying british airways heavily discounted fares closer to business class pricing which increased load factors dramatically and yet they turned a 70 million dollar profit more than they ever had before but many believe that british airways and air france weren't seriously trying to make money with the aircraft in the end its end came as the result of decades of lesser issues colliding with pure bad luck while taking off from charles de gaulle airport on july 25th 2000 air france concord fbtsc ran over a piece of engine cowling that a previous departure had lost blew a tire and the ensuing debris ruptured a fuel tank spilling fuel that ignited within seconds 113 lives perished this greatly sullied the image of the aircraft that both airlines had been using primarily as a marketing tool rather than a true profit center maintenance bills were mounting as concord aged and there were some indications that first class services on subsonic british airways and air france planes were turning a higher profit assuming that was true these airlines would rather have had their passengers fly their subsonic services an assertion backed up by the fact that both airlines refused to sell rather than retire concorde worrying that that would lead to losing loyal concord flyers entirely rather than converting them to subsonic services altogether the time was right to sunset the world's first supersonic passenger plane two decades have now passed with all the progress the world has made in its march through time some could not accept a new era bound by mere subsonic travel we're now approaching a possible renaissance of supersonic passenger planes and this time it might actually work there are three key players in the race to bring back supersonic travel none of which are airbus boeing embraer or any other current aircraft manufacturer arion was founded in 2003 the same year's concord's retirement and has spent the decades since developing a supersonic private jet the as2 in the time scale of aircraft development they're not too far from launch with production expected to start in 2023 and a possible launch by 2026 boasting financial backing from boeing and a partnership with ge for engine development arion is certainly not in the business of selling pipe dreams operating with a similar business strategy spike aerospace also aims to develop a smaller supersonic private jet uniquely they're planning to reduce complexity and increase efficiency by eliminating windows entirely in the passenger cabin replacing them with screens displaying high definition camera feeds from outside despite its lack of big-name partners and a less slick public appearance spike is viewed as a real contender and is working on a similar time scale to arium then there's boom technologies if you've heard of any supersonic aircraft developer this is the one their business model is entirely different they're not taking the conservative safer route with smaller private jets they want the whole pie they want to be concord 2.0 after emerging from the same powerhouse silicon valley accelerator program responsible for airbnb doordash reddit and more they've initially focused their time and funding on developing a one-person proof-of-concept supersonic jet the xb1 to serve their ultimate goal of launching a 65 to 88 passenger commercial supersonic jet the overture like arion they have some serious partners japan airlines the us air force rolls royce and more and are viewed as the most ambitious of the three companies yet potentially the one with the most attainable goal now supersonic passenger travel has already existed even if it doesn't now it will not be a technological breakthrough to simply make that happen again what will be a breakthrough if achieved though is doing what concord could not concord could not facilitate widespread supersonic travel in a sustainable manner both economically and environmentally these companies just might a good portion of concord's issues originated from noise you see a sonic boom is not as some incorrectly believe an isolated burst of noise at the moment a plane reaches the speed of sound from the ground it is perceived as an isolated burst of sound since a plane and therefore shock waves are moving but a sonic boom originates continuously as any object travels above the speed of sound therefore if concord were to fly from new york to los angeles at supersonic speeds everyone between the cities would hear the 110 decibel noise that's roughly equivalent to the loudness of a chainsaw in your own hands so it's no wonder why nearly every country in the world banned supersonic planes over land many believe that to make supersonic passenger aviation viable these bans need to end gaining the political will to allow a small number of incredibly wealthy people in supersonic jets to create such noise pollution is unrealistic so rather quite a lot of work is being put into turning the sonic boom into more of a sonic thump while there are a few different techniques being tested nasa is leading one of the most concerted efforts to create a low boom supersonic plane they contracted lockheed martin to develop the x-59 as part of their low boom flight demonstrator program and if successful it will turn the perceived loudness of a sonic boom from that of a chainsaw to a car door closing you see with concord or essentially any existing supersonic plane someone on the ground or more accurately the ocean would actually hear two booms in very rapid succession that's because the shock waves that are perceived as sonic booms originate almost entirely from the nose and tail of the aircraft they coalesce together and travel to the ground leading to those two rapid booms the theory behind nasa's x-59 aircraft is to spread those shock waves out to create a longer but quieter sonic boom with an elongated skinny shape and strategically placed canards smaller shockwaves originate across the length of the aircraft thereby spreading the impact out after taking its first flight in 2022 this aircraft will be deployed from 2023 to 2025 to conduct tests over certain towns and cities they'll then gather feedback from those on the ground essentially asking if the sound is tolerable before bringing their findings to national regulators around the world with the goal of creating a new standard for an acceptable sonic boom in 2025 arion and spike have quite a lot riding on that 2025 decision they're both basing their business around the prospect of enabling supersonic travel not only over oceans but over continents too therefore while their methods differ from nasa's both companies are selling their aircraft off of the promise of quiet sonic booms boom technologies though with their overture commercial jet is taking a different tack when looking at boom's marketing materials all the potential routes mentioned are transoceanic and that's no mistake they're not risking anything on the potential of governments changing a decades-old rule they're building a jet that's going to have a sonic boom that's going to be loud and that's going to have little immediate prospect of flying over land and they're fine with that they're essentially building a jet that will be almost exclusively used on transatlantic and trans-pacific routes which do represent a big chunk of the world's long-haul flights and unless there's a massive change in legislation it just won't be useful for say europe to asia flights boom certainly does have legislative hurdles their aircraft will be louder at takeoff than current noise restrictions allow but this is part of the reason why the company with the most ambitious goal might actually have one of the better chances at success but success for any of these companies and passenger supersonic travel as a whole all hinges on the business case what brought concord down was at a fundamental level economics even if it did attain profitability for the airlines if anything the attractiveness of supersonic passenger travel has declined since the days of concord when it first entered service the highest class of service on most airlines offered seats similar to that of international premium economy today nowadays every major transatlantic airline has business class seats that lie flat as beds offering travelers the opportunity to get a decent night's rest while essentially losing no productive time by flying overnight in addition the vast majority of concord's passengers were traveling on business a segment of traveler for which time efficiency is paramount in 1970 or 80 or 90 any time spent on a plane simply could not be productive for business nowadays though most major airlines offer wi-fi and people can conduct much of their work remotely meaning someone on a 7-hour transatlantic flight can if they want get close to seven hours of work done even if travel is now less time efficient it can be more productive therefore with supersonic travel theoretically less attractive arion spike and boom need to take the flawed business model of concord and improve upon it enough to not only fix concourse issues but address the new more challenging business environment of course they know that so that's exactly what they're doing arion and spike focusing first and foremost on private jets sees this market as a more attainable target arion for example is planning on a 120 million dollar list price for its jet while this is quite the tidy sum there are people buying 120 million dollar private jets today for example airbus has sold more than 100 a320 family aircraft as private jets and those also list for upwards of 100 million dollars there are also plenty of private 737s a330s 757s a340 747s and more with thousands of billionaires globally there are certainly plenty of people who can and will pay for the prestige and convenience of a supersonic private jet in addition to the lowered price sensitivity the private jet market has another advantage its consumers inherently value time incredibly highly on long-haul trips most private jets are objectively less comfortable than certain first-class options on commercial airlines most mid-range private jets have eight to twelve seats roughly equivalent in shape and size to those used as first class on u.s domestic flights a large recliner seat in addition to a couch which sometimes converts into a single bed for the primary traveler if you were to fly from hong kong to sydney for example a group of wealthy people could take singapore airlines's fully enclosed suites with dedicated beds for each person for a fraction of the cost of a jet but what they lose is time convenience and prestige considering that plenty of people still choose to fly private long haul the type of person accustomed to flying private values time convenience and prestige first and foremost above comfort and that's exactly the market that supersonic private jets appeal to arion sees enough demand for 500 to 600 of their aircraft in the next 20 years and if they're right they're well on their way to profitability boom technologies meanwhile has to confront the task of making supersonic work for commercial airlines this time it's not going to be all about prestige airlines are not going to get aircraft for a fraction of development costs and they're going to have to fly on more than the few highest yield routes in the world their strategy has been essentially to trade a marketing problem for a development problem they claim that their aircraft will enable airlines to charge fares similar to that of business class as opposed to the first class fares that were charged for concorde of course remember in concord's final six months of operation for british airways they charged lower fares closer to business class prices and that correlated with the most profitable six months in the aircraft's history now if boom creates an aircraft with low enough purchase fueling and maintenance costs to enable such business class fares it's hard to believe that airlines won't find routes on which it'll work for now we'll just have to take their word for it and wait and see there's hardly any way now a decade from overture's earliest possible service entry to know if this is realistic the fundamental advantage that this new generation of supersonic passenger jets has is that it's a new generation a second generation concorde's development program financed by the french and british governments was a massively expensive deeply unprofitable venture the true beneficiaries of that spending though are arion spike boom and every other company that will develop supersonic jets with the benefit of hindsight they get to develop a jet that addresses concord shortcomings which objectively means that they have more opportunity for success that's certainly not to say they will succeed they each have to stay afloat throughout a long challenging and risky development process but they are closer to the finish line than anyone has ever been before whether the world needs or wants supersonic planes is an entirely different question but regardless it seems more certain than ever that within a generation the world will once again become a far smaller place i myself of course never flew concord so i was curious what it was like i know the broad strokes but i wanted the nitty details what was the concord experience like in the airport which lounge did they use what was the meal like on board what did people do on board what was it like to land in new york before taking off from london at least on the clock so i did a bunch of research compiled it into a companion video to this one and uploaded that to nebula of course the reason why it's there is because the youtube algorithm actually punishes us creators for trying something new but nebula is a different platform with no algorithm no ads no data mining it's a video platform that is just about great unique content made by great independent educational creators the ecosystem and its financial model allows us to take risks and make big budget projects like alaska's silent summer my brand new hour-long documentary shot on location in ketchikan a tourist town in alaska that suddenly had to confront a reality without tourists the best way to get nebula is undoubtedly through the rather amazing curiosity stream bundle deal at current sale prices it's less than 15 a year to get access to both sites curiosity stream has some phenomenal stuff too one of my favorites is gander international the airport in the middle of nowhere about the airport that used to be one of the most important in the world as a refueling point between the us and europe until planes got longer range i truly don't know of a better deal in streaming two streaming sites with stuff you'll actually watch for less than fifteen dollars a year at current sale pricing what's more signing up actually helps support countless independent creators so make sure to do so at com curiositystream.com wendover

Channel: Wendover Productions

Views: 1,461,527

Rating: 4.9139309 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: 4p0fRlCHYyg

Length: 21min 18sec (1278 seconds)

Published: Wed May 05 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/_Js_Kc_]

Have they (or are they going to) also solved the issue of the 5x lower gas mileage? Cause if they haven't, I would say the world does not need another generation of supersonic airplanes that would become the one means of transport with the highest emissions per passenger mile by a very wide margin.

[u/wood_shenaya]

Concorde 2.0😀

[u/UnSafeThrowAway69420]

Great video!