I think they've completely missed the mark. While booms might have been one issue, the bigger issue was always about economics. Supersonic planes were, and still are, extremely expensive to operate, they required the longest runways, and coupled with the lower passenger capacity, they made cost of travel very expensive.

When the SST finally shut down, Boeing, amusingly, publicly announced that they would build a new supersonic plane; that lasted for about a month, when they finally came to their senses.

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I agree with IRstuff. Even flying with the likes of A380s the ticket prices are increasing continuously, so I wonder what SSTs will do to your pocket. Recovering development costs will be quite a challenge. I wish them well.

Andries

and then there's SpaceX with BFR ... single point-to-point rocket trip ... talk about "tripy" !?

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

So then maybe a good economical move to go to smaller plane sizes, that are a bit slower and very economical to operate?

The issue, as I see it, is that almost no new airports have been built, particularly in the US, in over 20 yrs; many, such as LAX are already over their design capacities, and really can't handle too many additional landings, while others, such as John Wayne, are limited by runways and noise abatement requirements. More passengers per landing seems to make the most sense.

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The rich and famous have always wanted to get there faster. The Concorde simply aged out . the next solution seems to be the supersonic vacuum tube rail. or the hyperspace plane. The British HOTOL , or a single stage rocket that can go to orbit then re-land at its destination using the Space X technology or similar. Branston's Virgin Galactic with more development might do something there , but not for many years.
B.E.

You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.

@IR ... and yet A380 sales are stagnant.

It'll be interesting to see which marketing model (Airbus's, sticking with today's primary airports and building bigger planes, or Boeing's, developing new city pairs out of smaller market airports) wins. I suspect it'll be a draw ... both aircraft types (Larger A380s and smaller B787, MMA) will win enough that their builders will say (both of them) "we were right".

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

True, but not all airports can handle A380s, and possibly the market is saturated. Boeing reported a 35% increase in 737 sales in 2017, so there's that. The hub and spoke system in the US requires a certain mix of aircraft to maximize profits while still serving all the spokes. Some regional airports are essentially shutting down because they're not generating sufficient traffic to keep them in the spoke system, but the hubs are all highly leveraged for larger regional aircraft that feed into the hubs.

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