My POV is that if you want to improve door-to-door speed, focus on the airport experience (more time-efficient security, check-in, more predictability to let people "cut it closer", faster baggage handling and outbound logistics [rental car, etc]).
I flew my family on a our current vacation on a multi-leg trip in a 175 mph airplane, and beat the 560 mph airlines door to door on every leg, because my ground logistics time is almost non-existent. (Rental car or family pickup waiting plane-side, no security checks, no waiting for bags, and no sense "getting there early" because it's obviously not taking off without me.)
Suburb of Boston to suburb of Pittsburgh: 3h30m. From there to suburb of Cincy: 1h45m. There to Lexington, KY: 52m. There to Livingston, TN: 1h. Only on the BOS to PIT leg do the airlines have any hope of competing.
Speeding up the airline experience doesn't have much to do with speeding up the airliners themselves, IMO.
Even if planes travelled at the speed of light, it would still take ~2 hours (an hour and a half to check in and go through security, 30 minutes to deboard and get get luggage). The maximum speedup possible is ((time spent in the airport) + ( time spend on the plane))/(time spent in the airport). That would be ~4x for a cross country flight, and ~7x for a LA to London.
Being able to "cut it closer" is not just a function of predictability, but also of frequency and of the consequences for missing your intended departure. If I miss the local city bus, it's not a big deal, because I can get another one ten or fifteen minutes later for the same price, so I usually only get to the stop about 90 seconds before I need to be there. During rush hour, I get to the caltrain about 3-5 minutes early, and in the evenings, when the trains only run once an hour, I aim for 5-10 minutes. But if I miss a plane, the next flight might not be for 6 hours, and it could cost me an extra several hundred dollars. So even if the airport experience is made more time-efficient, the nature of the airline timetable will still result in people waiting in airports.
And this is, of course, another symptom of people valuing money more than time when it comes to air travel. Why are flights usually infrequent? Because airlines fly large airplanes less frequently rather than small airplanes more frequently, because it's cheaper. Why does it cost a lot of money to change your flight? Because airlines run their aircraft at close to 100% capacity, because it's cheaper.
Cut the average airliner size in half, increase the flight frequency by four, and average 50% full, and you'll have no problem missing a flight and getting on a later one. You'll also pay 3-4x as much for the ticket, of course.
Can major hub airports handle 4x the traffic of smaller planes vs large planes (I honestly don't know)? In the NYC area, in particular, air traffic congestion is a huge problem so "adding more flights" is not a practical option (unless those flights can be stacked more densely).
There have been many solutions proposed to this problem (usually expanding smaller, "nearby" airports) but it seems to me a better option would be to expand and improve regional passenger rail to reduce demand for short and medium-leg flights thus freeing capacity for longer distance flights.
I really want to be able to fly supersonically. When I picture myself on a transcontinental flight (which I take quite often), I picture an asthmatic plane wheezing it's way across the United States. Plane speed is an issue. It does not take 2.5 hours to fly from San Francisco to Denver. It should take under two hours(rarely it does, but barely).
Then there is the last mile issue. In one hour of travel I can get from San Jose to San Francisco or from SJC to LAX. In two hours of travel I can get from San Jose to Berkeley or SFO to DEN.
I already have my airport time down to a science (PreCheck + airport locations + not checking bags). The overhead on me being in an airport is easily less than an hour. Now just give me my faster planes.
I agree, but something like the Sonic Cruiser and better acceleration/deceleration profiles so that more time in the air could be spent at something like Mach .99 adds up pretty well.
LAX-JFK @ Mach .85 is 4:24. @.99: 3:47. United quotes 5:25 for the flight.
Okay, so forgive me as I only fly VFR piston if I am mistaken with some of the airways routing.
But, I don't care that its 2,200 nm straight line. It's going to be a lot more than that.
United have quoted that time because they have added up how long they will spend climbing and descending. Odds are that the plane that has never existed will need to get high to be able to go fast. This takes time. Generally they don't go for more than 1,000ft per min.
The whole best rate of climb and performance thing is hard to discuss because this craft doesn't exist. But lets say it takes 30 min, and has a Y speed of 450nm on average.
Going back to the united one, not knowing what they fly, lets just use 550knots because thats kinda faster side of common. They are able to do 3,000nm in that time, yet the straight line distance is just 2,200nm. All that time spent climbing/descending smoothly, then don't forget holding a few NDBs before entering the main patern. Circuit Speed isn't going to change much.
I would just suggest then that no matter what happens, we've 1hour of 'slow' time for that flight. That gives us about 1800nm to go faster on. That is about 3:20 with current gen stuff. Lets go for the best case, just subsonic. That is 660~knots. So we can now do it in 2:45, a massive saving of 35 min. So now that time could be 4:50. Add in security, baggage, transport to and from airport.
Not going to make much difference. Having more (maybe smaller) planes a day will be better for people who's time is very valuable. I believe Musk has his own Yakk which is capable of some 1000knot+ speeds.
Are track log (showing rate of climb and ground speed) and flight path for American 19 today JFK->LAX
Rate of climb is just under 2000fpm, and step-climbs to altitude are in the 25 minute range (with several periods of level flight prior to being cleared higher).
The direct route is 2148nm. The airways routing is 2214, or about 3% longer. In good weather, visual arrivals tend to be fairly direct and hold-free.
Biggest point was flightaware is cool. Check it out. :)
Well that is a lovely one for watching isn't it! Thanks.
Have you seen www.skyvector.com you can select the high or low routes if you wish. Whilst the mapping isn't 100% (ie don't fly from it, make very rough plans from it before going to your golden source state issued maps) it is really cool, espesually because it covers the world.
I have a dream of spending 6 months flying a little light aircraft along the silk route, visiting and exploring all the hops on my journy. One day maybe I'll have the means and the political situation will be suitable. That website lets you quickly see what such a mission would entail.
Concorde's specs were up to 5000 fpm climb. With some tweaking to the aerodynamics, flight planning and whatnot, I'm sure you could be supersonic 150nm into the flight instead of 250nm. (same goes for anything else getting up to cruising altitude)
In general, you don't want to fly in the transsonic zone (Mach 0.8 to Mach 1). The flow over parts of the wing goes supersonic, and while aero engineers can deal with supersonic and subsonic flows separately, we can't really deal with them together, the approximations flip (things go from being proportional to speed to inversely proportional). Most jetliners cruise right below the transsonic zone specifically to avoid this. The 777 uses specially designed wings to let it go further into the transsonic zone, so it can cruise at 0.85. If you design a plane to go any quicker either you need really long wings to lower the pressure differentials or to just go supersonic.
No, it's not, that's the point. Unless you find some way to fly without creating pressure differentials, a plane with wings that are miles wide, or a usable description of airflow transitioning from subsonic to supersonic, you aren't flying at Mach 0.99.
Most people moved to Long Island to commute to Manhattan. The train, in fact, came first, and then people moved there because the rattling train gave them access to Manhattan:
http://images.nycsubway.org/i77000/img_77458.jpg
Many moved from noiser Manhattan for more space and more quiet, especially back when Manhattan had even more elevated trains. Others might have moved from elsewhere in the world for access to high Manhattan wages, and accept the noise as the price of that access.
People will accept some noise when it's less noise than they dealt with previously or if it provides other benefits, but most people don't fly enough for sonic booms to be worthwhile in daily life. Even subsonic planes are unpleasant to live near.
A train running by is very, very different to a sonic boom. If you don't like the sound of a train, you can move a few hundred meters from the tracks and the inverse square law will do the rest. The sound of the train going by, even for people right next to the tracks, doesn't regularly break windows.
I suspect any solution to eliminating sonic booms while travelling at supersonic speed with respect to the nearby environment is immediately publishable.
Short answer: same order of magnitude for four people.
Longer answer:
The airplane burns about $75 of gas & oil per hour, and I figure the total cost is about $250/hr. (I fly it about 125 hours a year, and all my costs, including hangar, charts, insurance, in-year maintenance/inspections, and maintenance reserves for long-lived items [engine, prop, avionics] come to around $30K/year.) My local flight school rents a newer version of my plane for $209/hr, but they fly more hours per year, so that indicates my cost estimates are in the right ballpark.
This trip will be about 15 flight hours, or just under $4K in avg costs, or just over $1K in marginal costs. That's for a family of four (two adults, two kids 2 or over, so everyone needs an airline seat).
In real terms, if we had to fly commercial, we'd have skipped seeing my very old grandparents (always possibly for the last time), and only flown into Lexington for the wedding, rented a car for the week at the lake, and driven the three hours down here like the rest of the family.
Looking at far advance purchases on hipmunk, that looks to be $484pp on Delta, plus $100 in bag fees (2 bags, round trip), plus a rental car that we can avoid by having one of the family cars pick us up at the small airport just down the road from the lake.
So, same order of magnitude: airline is more expensive than the marginal costs, less expensive than the average costs. (And there's a lot of "hobby time" to train, stay proficient, geek out on airplane forums, and light airplanes are not nearly as "almost all weather" as airliners.)
Other less tangible items:
Much safer statistically to fly Delta than a piston single.
My kids know "Jeda and Baba", their late 80s great-grandparents, because they live 2 miles from a cheap-gas airport on the way to/from one set of their grand-parents, so we stop in for lunch/dinner and sometimes one overnight on those trips, including this one. I'm not especially sentimental, or extended-family oriented, but even still, that's worth a lot to me, as the day is coming all too soon when they won't be here and if we flew commercial, we'd literally never stop in to see them except for family funerals.
Big one for my wife: my airplane has lavatories at "either end of the flight", but not on-board. Now, we can divert anytime and be on the ground inside of 10 minutes usually, but for a 2 or 4 year old, or a pregnant 30-something, that can be a long time...
The real economic benefit is when you fly to multiple locations on a single short trip, more than convenient driving distance apart, served only poorly by commercial airports/airlines (either no nearby non-GA airport, or a bunch of spokes served by different hubs). In those cases, sometimes even chartering a Caravan or even a private jet makes sense, even if you can't fly it yourself.
The numbers are still reasonable but for the sake of completeness let's bear in mind the chance of a fatal crash in one of them is a full four times higher than flying commercial.
I think people make too big a deal about it - the drive to the airport is still probably the most dangerous part of the trip - but still. Damn piston engines!
A Skylane (Cessna 182) with a STC'd larger engine (PPonk O-520). It'll do 145-150 kts in the 4-8K feet range if you put the spurs to it. (I'm still breaking in the new engine, and that is best done at max continuous power: full throttle, 2700 RPM, in this case. At slightly more sane power settings post-break-in, I'll be doing 165-170 mph.)
The fatal rate is probably much worse than "only 4x". Per mile, all factors included, it's comparable to riding a motorcycle. Now, "all factors" includes running out of fuel, flying into weather beyond the capability of the plane or pilot, and CFIT, all of which the prudent pilot has some means to control/influence to a far greater extent than a motorcyclist does. Still, it's not for the completely risk-averse, and my wife hasn't yet let me fly with me and the kids (and without her), because she doesn't want to think about living after a possible 3-fatal scenario.
I borrowed a "crew car" (free, short term loaner car) yesterday to run an errand, and it was an old, clapped out Dodge Ram van that hadn't seen a tire balancer or front-end service in who knows how long. Driving that thing to/from the airport was almost certainly the most dangerous part of my travel... ;)
That works short-ish continental flights (similar to high-speed train in fact). Try competing with an airliner on LA to Tokyo, or even just NY to LA, might be slightly more difficult.
NY to LA is, what, 6 hours? There's easily 2-3 hours of wasted time around each end of that period.
Getting to the airport (because airports are insanely far from anywhere anyone usually is), getting through security, baggage, mandatory check-in cutoff times, etc etc. These all collectively end up eating 4-5 hours in additional time besides time in flight.
That's a total travel time on the order of 9-11 hours. Even if we halved the flight time it'd still be 6-9 hours.
I don't know about you, but getting from anywhere in Manhattan out to JFK takes me about an hour via public transit. About 40 minutes via cab in decent traffic.
These things add up. What I care about is door to door travel time, not just one portion of it. The moment someone invents a plane I can show up to 15 minutes before departure, walk on, and sit down, that'd be a revolution.
I flew my family on a our current vacation on a multi-leg trip in a 175 mph airplane, and beat the 560 mph airlines door to door on every leg, because my ground logistics time is almost non-existent. (Rental car or family pickup waiting plane-side, no security checks, no waiting for bags, and no sense "getting there early" because it's obviously not taking off without me.)
Suburb of Boston to suburb of Pittsburgh: 3h30m. From there to suburb of Cincy: 1h45m. There to Lexington, KY: 52m. There to Livingston, TN: 1h. Only on the BOS to PIT leg do the airlines have any hope of competing.
Speeding up the airline experience doesn't have much to do with speeding up the airliners themselves, IMO.