8 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

It will be interesting to see how test flights go.

 

Indeed, I'm sure the company have considered carefully the viability. 

I see the advantages of this plane vs Concorde as being primarily better fuel efficiency.  Another advantage is that it won't need a flight engineer like the Concorde.  Its range is 300nm more than Concorde, so that's another small advantage.  The max speed of 0.95 mach over land is a restriction that would apply to any supersonic aircraft no matter how fantastic it is.

The main drawback for me is the passenger capacity of only 65-80 passengers.  This indicates that it will be in a semi-luxury airline class, slightly below a private jet but far above a commercial jet, so ticket prices will be quite high.  Concorde could accommodate up to 120 passengers, so Boom is going to have to be a lot more fuel efficient in order to achieve a significantly lower passenger cost per mile. Another disadvantage is its slower speed of mach 1.7 vs Concorde's mach 2.02.

Bottom line is that this thing is going to have to really shine where fuel consumption is concerned, which I'm a bit dubious about as it will use 4 medium bypass turbofan engines instead of 2 high bypass engines.

Dave

 

3 hours ago, dave2013 said:

Concorde could accommodate up to 120 passengers,

BA’s limit was 100 pax. Not sure about AF but likely to be the same.