Why have airline travel times not decreased over the decades?
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It actually has gone longer. Older airplane designs could fly faster than more modern ones. As it turns out people don’t care too much about the length of the flight they care more about the cost and flying slower is cheaper. The market spoke and planes got slower but more efficient and cheaper per passenger flown mile.
OP I’d be really curious if you re asked this question from the fuel aspect angle as to why jet engines have not become more fuel efficient like cars have over the past 70 years
The distances between places haven’t changed, why would flight times?
It will one day get faster, when we have such a great battery that can fit into an airplane while supplying fuck ton of electric energy to the engines. Oh and the energy must be nearly free, it must come from a country sized solar panels. But it is quite far from today, maybe not in our lifetime (though i very wish it comes earlier)
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Supersonic travel typically requires a far higher fuel consumption per passenger-mile traveled making kt VERY VERY VERY Expensive fuel wise, and supersonic aircraft designs tend to be especially inefficient when not traveling supersonic, which is a problem given that many governments don’t want supersonic travel above populated land due to noise concerns.
As such there’s little demand for supersonic passenger travel, and only one company even trying to make a modern supersonic jet possible.
The concord got the price from a survey British airline did. The noise and sonic boom actually got it banned from almost all non oceanic routes due to most countries banning non military planes from making sonic boom over land.
Because planes have been going close to the speed of sound for a long time, and going any faster would require a much more expensive plane with less space for passengers and spending more time in maintenence and inspection while consuming much more fuel. That cost simply isn’t worth it. The Concorde was meant to be a supersonic airliner, but it failed due to being so expensive and not much more capable than a normal plane.
When it takes 90 minutes to check in and clear security and then the plane takes off one hour late because a flight attendant sneezed, and then an hour to get your bag back on arrival… does it matter if the plane flies 10% faster??
The air travel experience all told takes significantly longer than it did in 1980. Very little to do with plane speed though.
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