> Together with a few other optimizations, these tweaks yielded over 1,000mi in increased range—enough that we could now afford a remarkable passenger cabin without sacrificing fuel efficiency or range.
Honestly, the way the narrative reads, they're still sacrificing 1,000mi of range in the interests of an improved cabin experience. They've just found an optimisation that enables them to reach a net neutral state.
Given we're effectively talking about fuel efficiency here, it's hard to imagine airlines wanting an improved cabin vs less fuel consumption. All the incentives are on them already to meet a "barest minimum" cabin experience that they can get away with, because every bit of luxury costs them in numbers of passengers, and fuel costs.
cogogo · 50m ago
Saw a Jet Blue plane wrapped in Peacock livery today… selling the planes themselves as billboards sure does feel like scraping the bottom of the revenue barrel.
handfuloflight · 5m ago
That would be an accurate statement if they were being sold for bottom of the barrel prices.
This is the reason Delta and United and doing well right now and Southwest and the LCCs are struggling.
It wasn't true just a few years ago, but if this continues as a trend, I could see an airline sacrificing fuel efficiency for a dramatically improved onboard experience.
notahacker · 3h ago
Premium cabins tend to be a very small proportion of overall seats and are about overcharging for a little extra legroom and service rather than trading off operational flexibility for unique luxury though. Big difference between charging 3x economy rates for 2x the space for a carefully estimated proportion of seats in a mixed configuration (no brainer) and hoping your layout is so good it justifies thirstier, less flexible aircraft to operators (tough sell)...
That said, Boom's customers - if they ever exist - will be a new business class pay extra for supersonic flights category anyway.
JumpCrisscross · 2h ago
> Premium cabins tend to be a very small proportion of overall seats
Most of the profit on a plane is made in business class. If airlines could fly an all-business configuration, they would. The problem is the smallest planes that can do high-paying routes like LON-NYC are bigger than that customer set. So the airline throws in economy seats, often barely breaking even on those, to fill space.
In a world with small airliner planes that can make those transoceanic and transcontinental journeys, I suspect we’ll see more all-business class flights.
bombcar · 3h ago
But that's just it - the airlines have finally (lol) realized that a huge price "Delta" (lolx2) between normal cattle class and first class was a mistake.
People aren't usually paying 4x for first, but they will pay $10 more for Y, $30 for Z, etc.
The future of airlines is fully adjustable planes!
jgalt212 · 25m ago
Business Class trades well above 3X tourist class.
chronia739 · 19m ago
> Business Class trades well above 3X tourist class.
If you are a tourist searching business class on Google Flights, of course it’s 5-6x more expensive.
True business class / upper class travelers get discounts of 20-50% for J. And no, they’re not using Amex/Chase Travel.
sandworm101 · 2h ago
It isnt a trend. This is marketing. Thirty years ago, the a380 was pitched as having room for luxury too. The new plane is always going to have more legroom, wider aisles and better air conditioning than anything before. But it never happens. The pitch to actual operators is the square-feet of floorspace and how many seats can be crammed into that space at given price points. Just like concord, this thing only makes sense with quazi-economy seating. Do not expect to nap on a nice lie-flat seat.
JumpCrisscross · 1h ago
> It isnt a trend. This is marketing
They’re citing historic data. It absolutely is a trend that premium travel is an increasing slice of post-Covid American air travel.
highfrequency · 4h ago
> We can literally define an airplane parametrically in a configuration file and press a button. In a matter of minutes we have a complete quick-and-dirty analysis of how the whole aircraft performs—as mkBoom flies the aircraft through a full simulated mission (takeoff, climbout, acceleration, cruise, descent, landing). Overnight, mkBoom can run higher-fidelity simulations for a more exact understanding of performance.
Awesome stuff! Allows large scale exploration across all dimensions of plane design to jointly optimize all components and their interactions.
signatoremo · 59m ago
Boom’s potential customers wouldn’t be able to put more seats on their planes even if they want to. I suppose the targeted performance affords very little margin for customization
polishdude20 · 1h ago
I wonder if they run this through an optimizer then?
Aurornis · 5h ago
> XB-1 is the world’s first independently-developed supersonic jet, breaking the sound barrier for the first time in January, 2025. It was designed, built, and flown successfully by a team of just 50 people
This is a great headline and very impressive. However, it’s also somewhat puzzling to see the company spend so much investment money to build a small prototype plane that doesn’t resemble a commercial airliner in any way, break the sound barrier 6 times, retire it, and then conclude they’re on their way to delivering commercial supersonic passenger planes in five years
Boom Aero is one of those companies I want to see succeed, but everything I read about them tickles my vaporware senses. Snowing off a one-off prototype that doesn’t resemble the final product in any way (other than speed) is a classic sign of a company spending money to appeal to investors.
Retiring the plane after only a few flights is also a puzzling move. Wouldn’t they be making changes and collecting data as much as possible on their one prototype?
_moof · 4h ago
I work in aerospace and I don't find this development strategy unusual prima facie. I don't know if Boom is explicitly doing rapid spiral development, but this is what it would look like from the outside - a development vehicle that doesn't resemble the final vehicle design in many ways, but does have strategically selected commonality to validate and buy down risk on specific subsystems and operational concepts. They may be retiring XB-1 simply because they got the data they needed.
That being said, I share your skepticism of Boom as a company. As far as I know, they still don't have an engine for their production aircraft design.
rjsw · 1h ago
The HP.115 [1] and BAC 221 [2] were not exact scale replicas of Concorde.
The demonstrator was to validate some basic concepts they were promoting about being able to achieve supersonic flight without supersonic booms. It achieved that at relatively low cost, and gave them something to brag about, an indication of baseline competence at certifying airframes and possibly ticked off some investor boxes. There wasn't much more to be learned about large passenger jets using their intended custom engines from a small GEJ85 powered platform, so its not surprising they haven't gone to the expense of continuing to fly it. It's not going to be useful for most other stuff they might want to test, apart from perhaps their intended custom engines which are probably years away from being certified for flight tests, never mind hitting performance and reliability targets.
dylan604 · 1h ago
I wonder what kind of liability it would be to sell a one-off prototype plane like that. Guessing it would also have more value has a model in the lobby or on a pole outside headquarters one day than they would earn in selling it.
jandrese · 5h ago
My take is that they felt like they were already pushing their luck with the prototype and didn't want to scare investors away when it inevitably crashed.
I share your skepticism, especially with their timeline. It has been some time since I looked at them closely, but they originally pitched developing their own supersonic capable turbofan to power their eventual production model. Especially with such a small team that seemed overly ambitious to me.
exabrial · 4h ago
Hah.... in the back of my mind: announce they're going to crash it before the fly it.
"This flight we're validating our model by pushing the real world to the limit. It should explode about 38s into the test and crash. We've cleared the expected area"
sidewndr46 · 4h ago
The market for Boom is not commercial passenger flights. So much time is wasted with security, boarding, taxi-ing, waiting at the destination for a gate to unload, etc. that the flight speed is not a big deal. Existing commercial passenger jets could already go faster without going supersonic and save some time, but it doesn't matter. Even if you fly commercial passenger jets at the absolutely face-melting Mach 3.3 of the SR-71, you don't really save enough time to matter. The maximum speed in flight doesn't do anything to address ground delays.
JumpCrisscross · 2h ago
> time is wasted with security, boarding, taxi-ing, waiting at the destination for a gate to unload, etc.
Airlines can optimise for this. Digital ID virtually eliminates security lines. Paying up for gate, t/o and landing spots takes care of the latter. There is a cost tradeoff for service in the airline business. An all-business airline flying Booms would almost necessarily have to pay up to negate these issues. (That or fly out of the FBO terminal.)
sidewndr46 · 2h ago
Airlines do not dictate airport security.
You cannot simply add gates to airports with even an infinite pile of money. It doesn't matter, unless you're going to make flights from nowhere to nowhere. Doesn't sound like a business strategy to me.
JumpCrisscross · 1h ago
> Airlines do not dictate airport security
Airlines absolutely choose whether to participate in various programs. Digital ID was cited for a reason.
And in some cases, the airlines have substantial control—Delta One has a separate security line at JFK.
> You cannot simply add gates to airports with even an infinite pile of money
You don’t. You outbid someone else for the existing ones.
dylan604 · 1h ago
> And in some cases, the airlines have substantial control—Delta One has a separate security line at JFK.
I'm actually surprised more airports don't have VIP level gates that the airlines can pay a premium for allowing them to charge a premium to their passengers. It'd be interesting to see where the price could be that would guarantee enough passengers willing to pay the premium for much reduced airport headaches.
SkyMarshal · 2h ago
That may be true for domestic coast-to-coast flights, but not for transoceanic ones across the Atlantic, or especially the Pacific, or north-south across hemispheres, that can take 8+ hours. Flight time is a higher portion of the total travel time in those cases, and seems like the main market for Boom, especially if they initially target Business Class flyers who do those kinds of trips regularly.
sidewndr46 · 2h ago
Boom XB-1 did 750 mph air speed. If I've got an 8 hour flight at 561 mph in an A380 that's a reduction to 5.984 hours when I move to the Boom XB-1. Who cares about saving 1.1 hours on a transatlantic flight. There is a reason why Concorde's cruise speed was 1,341 mph.
So when Boom makes a commercial airliner that hits 1000+ mph with the same availability and turnaround time as a typical passenger plane then I'll pay attention. Until then, it's for rich people who can buy their own plane.
signatoremo · 1h ago
XB-1 is only the demonstrator. They aim to produce commercial airline that can cruise at 1.7 Mach. NYC to London in 3.30h instead of 6h.
Rich people can already buy private jet that is much more comfortable than supersonic one.
8 hours - 5.984 hours = 1.1 hours? My math works out to just over 2 hours of time saved.
testing22321 · 1h ago
Not disagreeing with you at all.
What is the market for Boom?
SkyMarshal · 2h ago
I think part of it was that they were testing a new aerodynamic design that eliminates or minimizes sonic boom, so they can go supersonic over land almost immediately after takeoff, and operate over populated land routes. It makes sense to test that kind of thing with the smallest possible model first, then see if you can scale it up to passenger size without losing that quiet acceleration. Their timeline for doing that may be optimistic, but what they're doing makes sense.
dingaling · 2h ago
The XB-1 doesn't have any boom reduction shaping. That's the NASA X-59, though that aircraft is pretty much a dead-end in that it's not scalable to a passenger configuration.
The XB-1 made use of an atmospheric trick to minimise boom propagation to ground level on one test flight, so well-known in fact that Concorde sometimes used it to accelerate as it coasted-out without an audible ground-level boom. Unfortunately that trick runs out at about M1.17.
dingaling · 2h ago
It's also largely PR guff. The first privately-developed supersonic aircraft was the Northrop N-156F, forerunner of the F-5, that first flew in 1959. Funded entirely from company funds with no military contract. And it went supersonic in its first flight with no drama.
In fact the chase plane for the Boom XB-1 is a T-38, derived from the N-156F. It can outrun the XB-1.
bangaladore · 1h ago
I'm not sure how strictly privately developed the N-156F is given you could easily argue that reuse of design, knowledge and relationships from existing contracts saved them a lot of money.
theptip · 2h ago
As an aside, anyone care to speculate on the “secret seat configuration”?
I guess maybe it’s a recliner with feet pointing to the outside (maybe just two seats per row)? That’s the only new configuration I can imagine that would require reshaping the hull.
Etheryte · 2h ago
I'll be very disappointed if the big secret isn't the smart-fella-fart-smella configuration.
sandworm101 · 2h ago
Forget luxury. Forget speed. Hands down, the best flying experience I've ever had was on a dirty, slow, late and loud C-130. After an announced delay on the ground, I wedged myself between a cargo pallet and the wall, threw a ratchet strap across as a "belt" and passed out on a metal floor with a backpack for a pillow. No in-flight meals. No safety briefs. No entertainment systems. No drink service. Nothing. I don't even remember the takeoff. The only thing anyone said to me was "Uh, sir... We are about to land. You have to get up." THAT is what I want from flying. Give me a bit of peace, a chance to sleep, and I couldn't care less how fast or slow the journey.
dgunay · 1h ago
I know it's due to safety but I really wish there were an economy version of the lie flat seat. I'd gladly sleep in a set of bunk beds stacked 3-4 high for an 8 hour flight.
JumpCrisscross · 2h ago
You’re describing a lay-flat seat. (If you let them know you don’t want to be disturbed, they won’t.)
vosper · 2h ago
Of if you are on Air New Zealand and can't afford business class you can get a Skycouch in Economy. They're pretty great, actually, unless you're over 6ft tall or can't sleep with you knees bent a bit
sandworm101 · 1h ago
Are you kidding? On a commercial flight, between the safety briefs, seatbelt warnings, and "turn on/off your devices" there are constant announcements. And the stupid entertainment systems you cannot turn off, or at least that spring to flashing life again after each pointless announcement. I wore my ear defenders on united once, and was woken mid-flight by a steward informing me they were not allowed as i wouldnt be able to hear announcements.
Honestly, the way the narrative reads, they're still sacrificing 1,000mi of range in the interests of an improved cabin experience. They've just found an optimisation that enables them to reach a net neutral state.
Given we're effectively talking about fuel efficiency here, it's hard to imagine airlines wanting an improved cabin vs less fuel consumption. All the incentives are on them already to meet a "barest minimum" cabin experience that they can get away with, because every bit of luxury costs them in numbers of passengers, and fuel costs.
This is the reason Delta and United and doing well right now and Southwest and the LCCs are struggling.
It wasn't true just a few years ago, but if this continues as a trend, I could see an airline sacrificing fuel efficiency for a dramatically improved onboard experience.
That said, Boom's customers - if they ever exist - will be a new business class pay extra for supersonic flights category anyway.
Most of the profit on a plane is made in business class. If airlines could fly an all-business configuration, they would. The problem is the smallest planes that can do high-paying routes like LON-NYC are bigger than that customer set. So the airline throws in economy seats, often barely breaking even on those, to fill space.
In a world with small airliner planes that can make those transoceanic and transcontinental journeys, I suspect we’ll see more all-business class flights.
People aren't usually paying 4x for first, but they will pay $10 more for Y, $30 for Z, etc.
The future of airlines is fully adjustable planes!
If you are a tourist searching business class on Google Flights, of course it’s 5-6x more expensive.
True business class / upper class travelers get discounts of 20-50% for J. And no, they’re not using Amex/Chase Travel.
They’re citing historic data. It absolutely is a trend that premium travel is an increasing slice of post-Covid American air travel.
Awesome stuff! Allows large scale exploration across all dimensions of plane design to jointly optimize all components and their interactions.
This is a great headline and very impressive. However, it’s also somewhat puzzling to see the company spend so much investment money to build a small prototype plane that doesn’t resemble a commercial airliner in any way, break the sound barrier 6 times, retire it, and then conclude they’re on their way to delivering commercial supersonic passenger planes in five years
Boom Aero is one of those companies I want to see succeed, but everything I read about them tickles my vaporware senses. Snowing off a one-off prototype that doesn’t resemble the final product in any way (other than speed) is a classic sign of a company spending money to appeal to investors.
Retiring the plane after only a few flights is also a puzzling move. Wouldn’t they be making changes and collecting data as much as possible on their one prototype?
That being said, I share your skepticism of Boom as a company. As far as I know, they still don't have an engine for their production aircraft design.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handley_Page_HP.115 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairey_Delta_2#BAC_221
The demonstrator was to validate some basic concepts they were promoting about being able to achieve supersonic flight without supersonic booms. It achieved that at relatively low cost, and gave them something to brag about, an indication of baseline competence at certifying airframes and possibly ticked off some investor boxes. There wasn't much more to be learned about large passenger jets using their intended custom engines from a small GEJ85 powered platform, so its not surprising they haven't gone to the expense of continuing to fly it. It's not going to be useful for most other stuff they might want to test, apart from perhaps their intended custom engines which are probably years away from being certified for flight tests, never mind hitting performance and reliability targets.
I share your skepticism, especially with their timeline. It has been some time since I looked at them closely, but they originally pitched developing their own supersonic capable turbofan to power their eventual production model. Especially with such a small team that seemed overly ambitious to me.
"This flight we're validating our model by pushing the real world to the limit. It should explode about 38s into the test and crash. We've cleared the expected area"
Airlines can optimise for this. Digital ID virtually eliminates security lines. Paying up for gate, t/o and landing spots takes care of the latter. There is a cost tradeoff for service in the airline business. An all-business airline flying Booms would almost necessarily have to pay up to negate these issues. (That or fly out of the FBO terminal.)
You cannot simply add gates to airports with even an infinite pile of money. It doesn't matter, unless you're going to make flights from nowhere to nowhere. Doesn't sound like a business strategy to me.
Airlines absolutely choose whether to participate in various programs. Digital ID was cited for a reason.
And in some cases, the airlines have substantial control—Delta One has a separate security line at JFK.
> You cannot simply add gates to airports with even an infinite pile of money
You don’t. You outbid someone else for the existing ones.
I'm actually surprised more airports don't have VIP level gates that the airlines can pay a premium for allowing them to charge a premium to their passengers. It'd be interesting to see where the price could be that would guarantee enough passengers willing to pay the premium for much reduced airport headaches.
So when Boom makes a commercial airliner that hits 1000+ mph with the same availability and turnaround time as a typical passenger plane then I'll pay attention. Until then, it's for rich people who can buy their own plane.
Rich people can already buy private jet that is much more comfortable than supersonic one.
https://boomsupersonic.com/overture
What is the market for Boom?
The XB-1 made use of an atmospheric trick to minimise boom propagation to ground level on one test flight, so well-known in fact that Concorde sometimes used it to accelerate as it coasted-out without an audible ground-level boom. Unfortunately that trick runs out at about M1.17.
In fact the chase plane for the Boom XB-1 is a T-38, derived from the N-156F. It can outrun the XB-1.
I guess maybe it’s a recliner with feet pointing to the outside (maybe just two seats per row)? That’s the only new configuration I can imagine that would require reshaping the hull.
Yeah I found your problem :P.