Why are commercial airplanes still so slow? | Hacker News Reader

Why are commercial airplanes still so slow?

9 pointsreset202318 comments

Whatever happened to supersonic commercial flights? It takes so long to get anywhere on an airplane and it 2023, their speed is still the same as 80 years ago.

View on HN

Would it be nice if planes went faster and you could cut maybe an hour from a cross country flight? Sure.

But to me at least, the speed is the smallest issues with airplane travel.

The bigger issue is that it's just a miserable user experience all the way around: finding and buying tickets, going through security, boarding the plane, eating and being entertained on the plane, sitting in bad chairs, unpleasant bathrooms, and then you get to the general societal increase in mental illness meaning you might have to deal with some onboard drama, etc.

I'd prefer to drive anywhere that's not over an ocean these days even if the flight was at Mach 10.

How many hours of driving vs flying are we talking here?

My preferences might deviate significantly from the norm, but I'd gladly take a week-long cross country road trip over a hellish day traveling by air.

That sounds just outright miserable. Hellish is how I would describe a week long drive, not a few hour flight. There's surely a lot to improve on flights but it seriously isn't that bad compared to driving and having to exert mental and physical effort on it for so long.

Really what I want is a train. A good set of trains. They should travel at a fast speed and go to many different places.

For a week long trip I'll do a 24ish hour drive each way over a flight. Able to bring everything I want, have a car, easily bring the dogs. It's a win all around for me.

They do that so you pay to upgrade whatever pain point you have. Think of all the upper class and upper middle class families that spring for Business for the whole family for their 1-2 yearly big trips. That's a huge profit for the airline. If economy was amazing and only cost a bit more, they would lose a ton.

Why don't we have slower air travel?

Eighty years ago we didn't have laptops to work from, or global connectivity. Now, we do. I'm thinking about total time, not only the travel time part.

Thinking total time, I can leave the office a day in advance as my 6 hour flight of 3000 miles now takes 20 hours. I can spend an evening in a large properly convertible chair/bed, have a stroll around the next day, perhaps enjoy the observation deck or a sit-down meal. I can have a proper day's work while on the move, watch a movie in comfort, have another sleep adjusting to timezone, and arrive at the destination in great comfort.

Instead of chasing speed, why are we not chasing that? It could be an airship. It could be a hydrofoil at sea or in waterways. It could be a train! It's a superior form of travel.

Physics and regulations. Cost of fuel is high so you want to fly for efficiency not flight hours. Going super Sonic wastes a lot of fuel, you can go a bit faster trans sonic for 10%-15 speed boost but the economics don’t pencil out.

Besides due to regulations a lot of airline design is stuck in the 60s/70s as redesign to modern standards is insanely expensive.

Commercial airliners are plenty fast.

Flying is a nightmare due to everything that is _not_ sitting on a plane. Booking, checking-in, dealing with labyrinth airport layouts, needing to walk literally miles to your gate in some instances, your own government treating you like a career criminal ala TSA, etc.

Sitting on the plane and going to sleep for a few hours is the best part of the whole ordeal.

Agreed. Would be curious on the math around slower, smaller, short-takeoff, airlines. Fast landing and takeoff is stressful and dangerous. History should have been the lesson about flying around what are effectively missiles. Sound is annoying in metro areas.

More pre-check security. Less hoopla. Many people have to drive 1hr+ to fly in the US.

The Concorde had a lot of issues with getting permits to fly overland due to sonic booms disturbing residential areas, so was limited to flight paths primarily over the ocean...which hurt the usability of the plane a lot. Add in fuel inefficiency (not sure if this is still the case given progress in aerospace engineering?).

Maybe aerospace engineering experts can weigh in on the fuel inefficiency issues, but definitely the combination of cost + limited flight paths made supersonic commercial flights nonviable from a business perspective

Also, it was very expensive. A cheap flight from NY to London was 4k+. Imagine the cost now. That was the main issue. Anything can continue as long as it's profitable. The concord was not.

There are companies that are researching the possibilities but there are many hurtles such as cost, noise, and pollution.

The answer is physics and wave drag. Why Aren't Commercial Jets Getting Faster? (Hank Green) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVLb0DRFKSY

We'd be better served by trains. Airplanes are not efficient, and the security theater is annoying.

A train from NYC to LA would be more efficient than a modern plane?

Not sure about that distance, but it's possible. Most flights are short to medium hops, and pretty much everything at those distances would be more efficient with trains.

I wanna see those trains crossing the ocean

if anything they should be slower. propjets for anything under 500 mi. maybe 700 mi even.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com