With coast-to-coast travel, time spent in the airport is a much lower fraction of travel time. That's why the coast-to-coast flights make sense for supersonic travel.

We don't know if the cost/benefit math works out until people are able to try.

Coast-to-coast is definitely the best case scenario. I recently flew SEA->ATL, and it took 4.5 hours at mach ~0.7. So with airport time, let's say ~6 hours total.

Even ignoring differences in sub/supersonic flight (i.e., being unrealistically conservative), doubling my cruise speed to mach 1.5 would've increased fuel consumption by 4x while bringing my total travel time down to around 4 hours. So it'd be (probably significantly more than) 4x the cost just to reduce my travel time by 30%. Again, that's for the "best case" of coast-to-coast travel.

> So with airport time, let's say ~6 hours total.

How'd you manage to spend (average) only 45 minutes in the airport on each end? Even pre-TSA, I never managed to go from front door to jetway that fast.

I use O'Hare airport, one of the ten worst airports in the US. I never take a whole 45 minutes to get to my gate. Nor do I have any precheck or anything. I just pack light and check in online. Baggage dropoff and claim is what kills you.

I travel about once a month to the US and back to Canada... the security lineup can take up to an hour sometimes leaving SFO. So if I don't want to have a chance to miss my flight, I have to arrive 2 hours early really.

did you sign up for tsa precheck and/or clear? If you travel that much the amortized cost would make sense. You basically get inserted into the line right after the "check id" part and don't have to take off shoes/ laptops

To/from Canada might want to look into NEXUS. Slightly more money but you get precheck, and immigration line skip both directions.

I'm assuming this is the international terminal? I fly ATL->SFO every 3 weeks or so and SFO domestic is the fastest airport ever. I'll leave downtown SF at 1 and get to airport, drop my bag off and be at gate in ~30 minutes.

ATL on the other hand....even with TSA pre I can take a full hour.

SFO is the only airport manned by private security instead of TSA, that is the reason it is super efficient.

I've cleared from the entrance through security to my (domestic) gate at SFO twice in ~15 minutes. It really blows my mind how they pull that off.

Better training, more incentives to be passenger focused etc. might be the reasons.

In fact in some contests these private guards performed 5x better than TSA employees in catching the bad guys/bad items while actually doing it lot faster.

For ATL - you can go in through international terminal and take the tram to the domestic gates. There is just less parking on the international side.

Wow, I just flew out of IAD and even though I arrived at 4AM for my 5:15 flight, security still took 45 minutes. The line was already twice as long by the time I got through.

I don't even want to think about trying to get through at a reasonable hour.

Oh, I always arrive early. No reason to take the risk, I can always sit and read a book. But I spend a lot more time waiting than I ever have getting to the gate. It's really just an overabundance of caution.

Many people (including me) consider the imposed waiting at the gate time part of the travel time. Whether from an abundance of caution or rational reaction to the wide variability of security procedures (and ground transport), it's still part of the total trip time.

That's fair. Though I've yet to actually need that time, so I feel arriving at the airport with less than an hour to go is a realistically acceptable thing I could do.

In Salt Lake City I recently saw on the local news that our airport recommended arriving 3 hours early for your flight. At the end of the report the news-caster said that SLC airport had below average wait times, as if that was suppose to make me feel better. It didn't.

"Things are bad here, but the good news is it's worse everywhere else." \s

At SFO you can go from entrance to on-plane in 40 minutes for a transatlantic flight.

I like SFO.

At SFO, the trick is getting from your origin elsewhere in the Bay Area to the entrance in the first place.

I found BART to make this pretty straightfoward when I lived in Berkeley.

Also, when flying to Sacramento recently I took the Norwegian Air trip from Gatwick to Oakland and then capitol corridor to Sacramento. Didn't even need to get on BART; the airport connector took me to the catwalk to Amtrak.

The only airport in the bay that seems hard to access is San Jose, which has less service anyway.

15 minutes without traffic or 30 minutes with traffic from SF to SFO isn't bad at all.

Here's a map with travel times: http://www.trulia.com/local/94128/driving:1%7Ctransit:0%7Cpo...

Move the pointer to central SF (and Trulia will assume you have instant access to the freeway). 30 minutes with no traffic. Not 15.

But anyway, I was talking about the entrance.

30 minutes would barely get you from central SF to the airport ramp with a mostly empty 101.

But that's not the problem. Getting parked and a shuttle in will be at least 45 minutes, if you get a shuttle faster than normal.

Taking BART to SFO entrance: check the schedules. You'll be surprised how much of the day it doesn't run at all.

This must be why I always Uber to the airport. On normal days (not big travel day like Thanksgiving time) you can get from SoMa to Standing Outside SFO With Luggage Out of Trunk in about 30min during the day. I've seen as low as 15min at night.

I may have always gotten lucky and when I actually plan the trip I try to go for more like 45min travel-to-airport-time. Just to be sure.

On Thanksgiving or such, the off-ramp from 101 to SFO takes about an hour. That's crazy.

Depended heavily on the airport layout and how close you want to cut it on the departure side. Avoiding checked bags is a significant timesaver.

I missed a few flights doing this but pre-9/11 it was definitely possible (but not advisable) to get to a smaller airport 30-45 minutes before departure and make the flight.

On the arrival side, back in the good old days (mid to late 90's?) with no checked luggage I could get from the arrival gate to Hertz #1 club gold rental car pickup (when it was in the terminal A garage) at SJC without breaking stride - probably 5 minutes max from the aircraft door to car door.

Post-9/11 it was often possible to make weekday morning flights at OAK arriving only 20 minutes before. (I did it a number of times!) Self-print Southwest boarding pass, almost no security line, everything is 3-4 minutes' walk from everything else.

Nowadays OAK has been expanded and the security lines are longer (and they have body scanners, which I opt out of, which also then takes longer).

I've gotten out of SFO in 30 mins (post-9/11), no checked bags obviously, boarding pass in hand, with most of that time spent in screening. This is also a good way to be the last person on the plane or miss it entirely.

Mid-1990s, traveling with my graduate advisor. His wife drop us off at the small airport, no more than about 15 minutes (!) before departure. We walked with our carry-on luggage through a quick metal detector/baggage X-ray, and checked in at the gate. About five minutes later the airplane door closed, for takeoff.

I still remember worrying about how close we cut it, but he'd done it many times and knew how long it would take.

I often fly out of a smaller airport in Upstate NY. For a morning flight, my routine is to set my alarm for 1:15 before the flight takes off. I get up, pack, and am out the door about with about an hour to go. I get to the airport with about 45 minutes to go, and arrive at the gate in time to wait 20 minutes to actually start the boarding process.

With precheck, most airports aren't much worse, other than the uncertainty of transport in. I've never had precheck take me longer than about 10 minutes in security. So as long as I'm not checking a bag, it's still pretty reasonable to arrive 45min before departure.

Many small airports outside of the U.S. work like this. I can turn up 20 minutes before a flight with luggage to check and board an intercity flight without any security. It depends on the size of the plane, small planes are deemed safe enough to fly without metal detecting the passengers.

You could get into Sacramento's airport in 45 minutes in the 90s, although that would be cutting it close. And even today, you can walk out with carry-on only in about 10 minutes, with the expensive parking close to the bridgeway into the terminal.

However, an hour and a half to get in with TSA "at your service" feels like cutting it really close, and I'm talking about "Smurf" (SMF), not San Francisco or San Jose.

I've been able to get from the airport entrance to my gate in under 30 minutes. It was around 2am going from LAX to PHL and there was a long-ish (maybe 20 min wait??) line behind us at security. We still waited another 45 minutes at the gate. So 1 hour on the departure end is reasonable. At arrival I don't see 1 hour being unreasonable either.

TSA Pre-Check plus no checked bags feels like some sort of travel revolution

Probably not to people who remember travelling before 9/11 (and probably even less to people who remember travelling before the security measures implemented during the 1990 gulf crisis that continued until superceded by post-9/11 security.)

You used to be able to go through without showing any documents, and so friends and family members could come through security to meet arriving passengers at the gate (or say goodbye to departing passengers at the gate!).

One time as a non-passenger I went through security at BDL two or three times either because of confusion about where to meet someone or just in order to buy food on the other side. The security guards didn't seem to think this was improper.

I remember early-90s BDL also. The security guards were pretty relaxed. We enlisted their help in faking out a younger sibling who didn't know we were going to Disney World; they played along that we were just going to meet someone at the gate, and let someone else take all the bags through ahead of us. Wouldn't be remotely possible now.

Then again, I also remember when kids were routinely let into the cockpit, either before takeoff or while cruising.

Air travel used to be almost fun.

When I was a kid air travel was great fun! I got to visit the cockpit in every plane we flew in, including the Concorde. As a curious child, this was absolutely wonderful.

Ah well, it seems that those days will never return.

Cockpit visits are still allowed on the ground, it's only in flight that it's no longer possible.

Well that's good, at least.

I still remember when I was fortunate enough to failover to a concorde when our 747 was grounded ~20 years ago and got to visit the cockpit in flight. There was a seam between two portions of the cockpit (a little less than an inch wide) that only existed when the plane was supersonic, and it closed tight when not.

Wouldn't have been able to scare a kid into thinking they could get their hand stuck in there if the plane was still on the ground ;)

Of course whether or not in-flight cockpit visits were still allowed, that particular experience wouldn't happen anymore.

Oh yeah, I remember being invited to visit the cockpit once as a kid (I don't remember whether it was on the ground or in-flight). I guess it was common on some airlines for the flight attendants to look around for kids and invite them up to meet the pilots.

Apparently in the 1960s to early 1970s, you could buy your ticket on the plane. (I wasn't around to have experienced that.)

Around that same period was the peak for plane hijackings - almost one per week in 1969. Cuba was the typical destination, 34 times that year.

<I also remember when kids were routinely let into the cockpit>

I wasn't a kid, but I got to hang out in the cockpit for a good-half hour on a cross-province Air Canada flight long after it was illegal in USA airspace (1990s). The amazing thing, apart from the scenery, was that you could see dozens of other jets in various headings and altitudes.

I used to walk through security barely slowing down and get on my flight without ever showing ID to anyone or checking in anywhere. And all the seats had actual knee room. I miss that feeling of freedom I used to get from air travel.

It's the same as pre 2003 travel. Just, now you have to pay for it...

Post TSA, I've shown up to a Florida airport ~15 minutes before takeoff and have made it.

Extremely lucky (mistake on person who bought my ticket's end) but it happened.

Red eye flights at Long Beach. Went through TSA in like 5 minutes. Seriously.

Yeah flying out at odd times and/or odd days can save you a lot of frustration dealing with the TSA lines. The worst of the lines are due to commuter or holiday traffic 99% of the time and the rest of the time you can breeze right up to the scanners and be through in a few minutes.

They kind of have to advertise the worst wait times though because if they say 1 hour non peak and 3 hours peak the times the airport or the traveler gets it wrong the airport will catch the blame.

Really? TSA pre-check, carry-on only or already have your baggage tags printed out, go through security like you've done it before (don't wait until you are about to go through the backscatter machine to take off shoes, belts, etc). Outside of the busiest airports or high-travel dates, shouldn't ever take more than 45 minutes.

I think cost/benefit is pretty well known. Getting empirical data though flight testing is definitely a large portion of building full performance numbers for the manual, but Boeing and Airbus has some solid expectations on performance numbers before the first rivet is ever put into place. I don't believe there are any real big "wait and see" mysteries on supersonic cost/performance.

> We don't know if the cost/benefit math works out until people are able to try.

That is true. If someone had told me about Uber 15 years ago I would have called that person mad. I never thought it was even possible to run a taxi company bypassing all the taxi regulations in place.

But having said that what really matters is the marginal value of time during coast to coast flight. At the moment it takes me on an average 10 hours to travel from SF to NY including the time spending in planning, traveling to airport, NSA bullshit etc. 4 hours is the actual flight time. If it is reduced to 2 hours I don't really benefit much. I still have to spend 8 hours.

Who said we were talking about domestic flights? This is a common problem on HN. Someone always tries to cherry pick the use case no one is talking about then create an endless pointless conversation.

There's a lot of international travel from the US:

http://travel.trade.gov/view/m-2016-O-001/index.html

Now LAX to Europe becomes easier. NYC to Asia gets much better.

The article's about the FAA ban on supersonic travel over the US - there is currently no ban on transoceanic flights.

Please read what I wrote again. I said nothing about flying from NYC to Europe or LAX to Asia. The point is that you can fly supersonic from NYC to Asia and from LAX to Europe. NYC and LA are huge markets, and probably where you'd expect a lot of people willing to pay the extra cost of supersonic flight.

NYC to London wasn't enough of a savings with the Concorde for many people. NYC to Tokyo/Shanghai/Beijing/Sydney/Singapore/Seoul/Mumbai would probably have more value, for example.

Also, LAX to London or Paris is about 10.5 hours. I'd think a market that cuts that to under 5 hours would exist.

Pretty much the only land a great circle JFK-NRT flight passes over is northern Ontario, Nunavut/NWT/Yukon, a little bit of Alaska, and Kamchatka. A great circle JFK-TPE changes that to Quebec, Nunavut, far-east Sibera, and Manchuria. (Of course, planes would take different routes for reasons like 'weather patterns' and 'restricted airspaces' and similar.)

So basically my point is this: the FAA has no jurisdiction over the vast majority of those routes.

Ah, I apologize - I definitely did swap NYC and LAX when reading your comment.

> Also, LAX to London or Paris is about 10.5 hours. I'd think a market that cuts that to under 5 hours would exist.

And very crudely, I think about 20% of the great circle route is over the US and hence in the FAA's jurisdiction. They're already allowed to fly supersonic over much of Northern Canada, and the great circle comes over Hudson Bay and to North Dakota (passing near Winnipeg)—that's the only section outwith the FAA's jurisdiction where they are not already allowed to fly supersonic I believe.

If supersonic flight can be made environmentally low-impact and cost-effective, they have the rest of the world to use as a proving ground first. Continental North America doesn't have to be the guinea pig for this.

Concorde demand wasn't typically driven by need; it was mostly driven by prestige.

I think when you get somewhere over 5x median income, prestige starts to become need.

That's an excellent point. For the price of a ticket on a supersonic transport you could probably charter a Falcon 900, Citation 10, or Gulfstream 4 to get you there much more comfortably and reliably albeit a bit slower. I would be willing to be home to hotel door times would be comparable.

Home to hotel doors would be better for most, since you'd leave when you wanted and not when the not particularly regular scheduled service was due to depart. On board internet connectivity has also made the idea that waking hours spent in a first class seat must be "wasted" seem rather archaic

>On board internet connectivity has also made the idea that waking hours spent in a first class seat must be "wasted"

I actually find long flights are a good time to catch up on things that don't require me to be online. (Whether work-related or not.)

Not to mention that small regional airports can often be significantly closer to your destination. General aviation for the masses would be a game-changer.

"Is it worth it?" is the kind of question markets are particularly adept at solving, if we let them.

I lived under concord fought path and the double sonic boom was very annoying.

One way that you can deal with an 'externality' like this is to internalize it: rather than an outright ban, have the airline pay some money to those affected. Maybe that makes it too expensive to be worthwhile, maybe not, but at least it's no longer impossible.

That's a fake sort of internalization because you can't really establish a fair compensation.

For example, if I have a recording studio under the flight path, do I get more compensation in order to add sound-proofing?

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/preserving-sile... describes "a Natural Sounds Program .. with the aim of protecting and promoting the appreciation of park soundscapes."

> In Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, which have a major naval air station to the west and a large military air training space to the east, park officials take military commanders on a five-day "Wilderness Orientation Overflight Pack Trip" to demonstrate the effects of military jet noise on visitor experience in the parks. Before the program started in the mid-1990s, rangers reported as many as 100 prohibited "low flier" incidents involving military jets every year. Now the number of planes flying less than 3000 feet above the ground surface is a fourth to a fifth of that. Complaints are taken seriously, especially when, as has happened more than once, they're radioed in by irate military commanders riding on jet-spooked pack horses on narrow mountain trails. In that context, human cursing is generally regarded as a natural sound.

How do you charge for that?

Back around 2008, there was an aviation startup (forgot the name, started by an ex-IBMer) based out of the Boca Raton Airport. In order to use Boca as the base hub [1] it had to pay for window upgrades (and A/C) for houses in the flight path.

My house was in the flight path (about a mile from the airport as the plane flies; neighbor across the street? Not so lucky). Unfortunately, the airline went out of business due to the downturn in the economy (pity). So it is possible to internalize it.

[1] It was a charter air service. I was really looking forward to it. Even if it was more expensive than economy, it wasn't as expensive as business or first class. You did have to have very flexible travel schedule to get cheaper flights.

While it's obviously not a perfect solution, it's likely better than a blanket ban.

> For example, if I have a recording studio under the flight path, do I get more compensation in order to add sound-proofing?

No, but maybe you could sell out and move somewhere without that noise, and someone who is noise-tolerant would happily take your place + the compensation on offer.

The "no" is why it isn't really an internalized cost.

It's the same with any sort of pollution - what's the minimum I can pay someone in order to put up a insert smelly, explosive, noisy, etc. factory? Or to put in off-shore windmills which affects peoples' sea views? Or schedule airport takeoffs at 2am?

(I forgot another complication: does the payment go to the landowner or to the resident? Or both?)

Regarding "likely better than a blanket ban", a goal is to develop methods that reduce the effect of the sonic boom "to make overland flight acceptable." This is also better than a blanket ban, and doesn't require a new way to approximate impact costs and manage payments.

> Regarding "likely better than a blanket ban", a goal is to develop methods that reduce the effect of the sonic boom "to make overland flight acceptable." This is also better than a blanket ban, and doesn't require a new way to approximate impact costs and manage payments.

You can't put the cart before the horse. You have to get rid of the ban in order to make the whole thing worthwhile.

I see now that "blanket ban" is an incorrect description. As I understand it, the current prohibition is that supersonic planes (except Concorde) are allowed, so long as they are below a given noise level. Here's the law, https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/91.821 :

> Except for Concorde airplanes having flight time before January 1, 1980, no person may operate in the United States, a civil supersonic airplane that does not comply with Stage 2 noise limits of part 36 in effect on October 13, 1977, using applicable trade-off provisions.

Going back to an article from 1973, at http://elr.info/news-analysis/3/10067/faa-promulgates-strict... :

> The policy underlying this regulation puts the burden of establishing the environmental acceptability of supersonic civil aircraft flight on the proponent, rather than on the affected public. However, the FAA has also made available reasonable opportunity for aircraft manufacturers to prove the environmental acceptability of supersonic flight if they are able to control sonic boom research without harmful effects on the public.

The problem appears to be that airplane manufacturers cannot meet the existing noise level, so instead want the FAA to say what higher level is allowed. This places the cost and responsibility on the government rather than the manufacturers. So of course the manufacturers would like to shift that expense to someone else.

This is silly, you could hear the noise for tens of miles to either side of the flight path. Think about how high the plane was and how far the noise has travelled.

So are you proposing the compensation be one-time and significantly greater than the standard transaction fees on real estate? For reference, they're around $10k on an inexpensive house.

It'd have to be ongoing, I think. It's probably not as simple as a few lines in a comment on HN, no, but is a blanket ban on something potentially useful a good idea, just because it's simple? My inclination is 'no'.

Sure, but the usual outcome of such proposals is merely to placate those affected with less compensation than the actual harm caused, and to erode such payments over time after the affected have lost their veto. Honestly carrying out such a plan costs more than businesses are generally willing to pay, especially when their dollars go much further by corrupting the political process directly.

Blanket bans have costs for people, too, though. In this case, we're not talking about dumping toxic sludge in a river, either, but about a sonic boom.

Pollution is all in the amount. One drop of toxic sludge in the Pacific is okay. One sonic boom a month (like when the Space Shuttle came in, or from military flights), is okay.

What about 1 per day? 10 per day? 100 per day? What are the limits? Who determines the limits? Who bears the burden of dealing with the pollution - sludge or noise - and how are their voices heard?

As I pointed out elsewhere, the existing prohibition does not appear to be a "blanket ban". If your supersonic plane is sufficiently quiet, I believe it is allowed to fly. The problem is that we don't know how to build planes which are that quiet. What's at issue is who pays for figuring out which higher noise levels are acceptable - industry or the government. And industry doesn't like the current government answer.

You're demonstrating my point itself, by switching to a completely different talking point rather than fleshing out methods to earnestly compensate those affected.

Because it's a HN comment, not a scientific study on exactly what the best methods are. Sheez! The point is: if you spend some time thinking about it, you can probably find something that works 'ok' even if it's not perfect, thus 1) allowing supersonic flight and 2) internalizing the cost so that the market functions and there's some consideration of the costs to people in the flight path.

If it were so easy to do, why haven't the aircraft companies been able to propose a solution?

It was loud enough to make the birds take off in alarm. So I expect most wildlife was startled by the noise. You can't compensate a shrew.

I suspect that in the grand scheme of ways humans displace and cause problems for animals, sonic booms are not high on the list. I mean, you wrote that you lived there - so presumably you lived in a house, accessible from a paved road. Those things take habitat away from animals.

You want supersonic travel and sonic booms. I want the travel without the boom. It's then just an engineering exercise to remove it. Fly above the atmosphere. Travel in a vacuum tube. Make travelling more interesting so long travel times aren't an issue.

I just want people to be able to try stuff. I don't want sonic booms, but I think that the economic path from here to there is an evolutionary one, rather than making a quantum leap from booms to no booms. So to get there, you have to put up with some noise.

True, but there are plenty of travel hacks to throw at this problem.

To start, the amount of time spent in airport varies highly by city and airport.

There's room to optimize that time — Global Entry / NEXUS and TSA Precheck for example.

Taking one of the first flights in the morning or last flights at night can also significantly reduce it.

Public charter / executive airports are another. One example is Ultimate Air Shuttle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Air_Shuttle).

> Ultimate Air Shuttle offers various benefits to passengers that some other airlines do not. These services include no baggage fees, no cancellation fees, and the ability to arrive at the airport 15 minutes before scheduled departures.

I'm not saying charter is available and accessible for every route, but there are lots of options out there.

New York JFK to Tokyo is 14 hours on a Boeing 777-300ER. JFK to Taipei is 16 hours. Those would be the perfect niche for a supersonic flight.

Start with chartered flights?

Time spent at the airport can be more productive though - catch up a few emails/tasks, walk around, shop etc. It's the long sitting flight hours, with constant interruptions that are very irritating.

If I'm flying long distance it's already a day where I'm not going to get anything else done. Might as well chill out at the airport with a book and the free drinks in the lounge.

If it's time spent waiting in a security line, you can't do any of those things.