A & A Models

[kerick]

I was looking back in this thread and those turbo engines on the DC-3s give me ideas. Not like I need more projects!

[Mossie]

It's a subscale demonstrator for a full size SST, so if it happens, you might well see a 1/144 kit.

[PR19_Kit]

The operative word there being 'if'........................

[Mossie]

Yup. I'd like to think so, but SST's don't have a good track record.

[Weaver]

Yup. I'd like to think so, but SST's don't have a good track record.

I wouldn't.

What they're talking about building is an 80-seater that will offer the first-class and business-class travellers more speed (but nothing like Mach 2). Now a small percentage of their customer base would come from would-be biz-jet owners, but most of them would still stick to their biz-jets because of the their total flexibility of going where they want, when they want: even a supersonic airliner will still be tied to regular routes and schedules. That means that most of their customer base would come from those currently flying in the business and first class ends of the subsonic cattle-trucks. The thing is, those people's premium fares are currently heavily subsidising the economy class tickets, so without them, the airlines are going to have to put up the price of the latter to keep the cattle trucks flying. And no, the supersonics aren't going to subsidize the subsonics, because they'll be a whole new expensive-to-operate class of aircraft that the airlines will have to buy and maintain. The money they generate will all get soaked up in keeping them flying and making a modest profit.

In other words, the current lack of an alternative creates an unintended effect of making the airline fares structure redistributive: rich people subsidize poor people and more of the latter get to fly. Give the rich people an exclusive, expensive alternative and they'll take it, leaving the poor people to pay more for their flying, which means they'll fly less or not at all. As an aircraft geek of course I'd like to see an SST fly, but not at the expense of making flying less accessible rather than more.

However I'm pretty sure it isn't going to happen, because Boom's got "fail" written all over it. They've already radically redesigned their airliner after a load of investors put money into the original, faster, more radical design, and the last I heard, all the major engine manufacturers had dropped them and they're now saying they're going to develop their own engine, leaving them about two billion dollars short according to independent analysts ...    

[Charlie_c67]

A&A 1/72 Boom XB-1 "Baby Boom" demonstrator.
https://www.hannants.co.uk/product/AAM7255?result-token=bSuJl

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It's got a bit of the Ultra Sabre about it...