I do LAX-DOH every couple of months. It's 16 hours each way, and regardless of class flown it is hell.

Cut it down to five hours, and I'll gladly pay $5000 for a round trip ticket.

Yes. I've taken that flight business - it's absolutely better, but if I had the option of cutting the time down in half for the same price I'd take a smaller seat any day of the week. Not knees-in-my-chest smaller, but traditional first-class seating any day.

As faster satellite wifi becomes a thing the longer flights are tolerable, but it's still time you could be on the ground doing something more useful.

I have flown ZRH-SFO-ZRH 3x a year for the last 10 years, last 2 years in business class. I would definitely take a halving of the flight time over a more comfortable seat.

On the other hand, I'm very doubtful about Boom; the fact that they mostly seem to be talking about the passenger cabin does not inspire a ton of confidence, and even if they get their plane built, I have doubts about their ticket price projections.

I'm more inclined to use terms like boring than brutal.

I suspect that it's highly questionable whether a supersonic design would be able to do the "brutally long" flights without refueling. The market for the Concorde and I imagine the market for this is the CEO/investment banker/international lawyer who wants to do a quick hop from NYC to London or Paris--including day trips.

The big difference was that Concorde mostly existed before the Internet. With email and video conferencing, the need for a lot of these 1-day out and back trips has likely been greatly reduced.

I've been on a transcontinental flight that was empty enough I could take over a whole row to stretch out and could wander around the aisle, and it was still tremendously physically uncomfortable after the first few hours. Even the nicest surroundings on airplanes have less room than the smallest office cubicle.

You're still stuck in a relatively small seat with little chance to walk around, breathing air with close to 0% humidity, a cramped and uncomfortable toilet, a dull roar in the background, and (if you're flying on an American airline) terrible food.

Choose a 787 if you possibly can. Better air pressure, much better bathrooms, high ceiling, and quieter. I'll adapt my schedule to ride that plane.

Edit: also, lovely big windows.

I suspect there are numerous parents who would happily pay more for shorter long haul flights (especially considering that a 12 hour flight is often 20+ when you add in connecting flights and layovers).

As a matter of fact, yes.