Why have airline travel times not decreased over the decades?
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Most jets today actually fly SLOWER than they did in the ‘60s. As you get closer to the sound barrier there’s a pretty big cost in efficiency.
There’s two main reasons:
1. Faster speeds require more fuel
2. There’s a limit to how fast you can go over land, the speed of sound. If you pass the sound barrier, you create sonic booms, which would disturb people. You can fly past the speed of sound over the ocean. The Concorde did that. The problem is that it isn’t very feasible because you can only do intercontinental flights, and it requires a lot of fuel, which raises prices to unaffordable levels.
Total travel time.
Understanding all the posts about fuel efficiency vs speed.
Although you can cut airtime by approx 10% (flying 95% the speed of sound vs 85%), this only adds minutes to short flights and maybe an hour to a long flight.
But, you still have the overall time sink of the drive time + arrive 1 hr early + waiting to deplane/get baggage + drive again to your final destination.
People would rather save $40-$200 and accept the 85% speed of sound savings.
People don’t want to pay for it.
When you look for airline tickets, do you look at price first, or which one gets there 30 minutes faster? Therefore price governs ticket prices which means airlines look to buy planes that are efficient, not planes that are fast.
Because as the Concorde demonstrated (and this was hardly news by the time it was even designed), the cost of fuel rises exponentially the faster you go through the atmosphere.
Also worth noting, is that because we have an atmosphere and a speed of sound, going faster than that speed is very loud, and tends to break windows when you go past it. This made a lot of farmers who have glass greenhouses, very, very upset.
Thus, the only place you can actually go that fast, is over uninhabited parts of the world. It’s literally only possible between Ireland and New York.
Lots of good answers on the drawbacks of the Concorde/supersonic travel.
It’s also worth mentioning that the consumer market for air travel has changed quite a bit and there simply isn’t as much need or demand for faster travel. The people who would benefit most from faster planes are economy fliers squeezed in like sardines in the back of the plane, but as we already know from the Concorde, supersonic aircraft would be very expensive and out of reach for these passengers. Premium cabin passengers, whether it’s business class or first class, typically have a more enjoyable in-flight experience on a modern widebody jet than they did 30-40 years ago. You don’t need a 3 hour flight between NYC and London when you can take a 6 hour overnight flight with a lie-flat seat to get some sleep in before you head to your meetings or whatever the next day. Plus, with most airlines offering in-flight wifi these days, business travelers who would otherwise spend money for a faster jet, are fine with the jets we have now if they can get some work done.
You have also missed the fact that the planes designs also have to have some leeway at the Mach limit, so it’s usually around 0.9 but it the structure has issues at 1.1 or 1.2 and beyond also
What’s the point? A plane already goes really fast. Shaving 20 mins off a 2 hr flight isn’t worth the effort and expense.
Sure long international flights could save more time, but those are rare for most people.
The speed of sound. Most countries don’t let you travel supersonic speeds in their airspace due to sonic booms. That is why the Concorde flew almost exclusively between France/England to NY. It could fly supersonic over the Atlantic but was subsonic over land.
As someone who’s been flying back and forth across the US since the 80’s I feel confident saying it has.
I used to always require a layover, now I fly direct all the time. Ive had W to E flights take about 5 hours when they used take 7 or so.
Hasnt really been halved yet, but its definitely faster. Though it does take twice as long to get through security 😁
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