Why do passenger aircraft manufacturers focus on building larger aircraft instead of faster supersonic laner?

Question

Airplane

Answer 1

FAA regulations prohibit civil airplanes from exceeding Mach 1 over the US.

Answer 2

There are a few reasons. Others have answered the reason why supersonic aircraft are not built such as fuel efficiency and getting government approval to fly through the country's airspace because of the sonic boom emitted.

Aircraft manufacturers don't always focus on building bigger aircraft but aircraft that are more suited for today's passengers such as bigger windows, wider aisle walkways, higher overhead bins, etc. It used to be that you build a bigger aircraft so that you can brag that you built the largest aircraft. Now it comes to what type of aircraft sells. Airlines are offering more point-to-point destinations because passengers do not like to make a lot of connections. Also people don't necessarily want to be stuck in an aircraft with 800 other passengers (imagine the wait to use the bathroom). Boeing offers the 787 Dreamliner which seats around 250-300 passengers which is about right.

Answer 3

Supersonic Aircraft are major fuel hogs, which make the cost to operate one higher then a regular airliner. The sonic boom from such an A/C would also cause Major problems in most Metro areas. This is one of the reason the Concorde had such a limited route. Saftey is also an issue. At that speed the reaction time for the pilots or the Air Traffic Controllers is cut very short. This would require giving each plane more open area around it, and the sky is only so big. The demand from the Airlines themselves is just not there. Boeing, and Airbus are not going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to develop a plane for which there is no market

Answer 4

A supersonic aircraft has to withstand stresses a subsonic aircraft does not.

Also, as structures get larger, their ratio of mass to cross sectional area increases. Strength of an object is often determined by its cross sectional area. Stresses on that object often come from its mass. Cross sectional area increases with the square of dimensions, mass with the cube. So basically as things get bigger, they get proportionally weaker, VERY fast. This means it gets very difficult to build a plane that can handle all the required stresses to go supersonic if you want it to be as big as a subsonic plane.

If you wanted to make the same money charging the same price on a flight, you'd need to burn around as much fuel, and carry around as many passengers. A smaller plane can't carry those passengers. The only cost you save with a supersonic jet is crew pay, and that could be eaten up by having to have more highly-trained pilots. And a supersonic plane generally will burn more fuel. Also, as has been demonstrated by the rise of Southwest Airlines, and the troubles almost everyone else has had, people will buy the cheapest ticket, and damn everything else.

The short answer is: there just isn't enough money in it.

Answer 5

Efficiency and acceptability. Concorde was quite economical at altitude and high speed, but not at normal speeds. A more modern SST would be more economical, though the engineers did a tremendous job for the 60s and achieved cruise on dry power, if Concorde lost an engine she couldn't stay supersonic at high altitude and didn't have the fuel to reach her destination, so she'd have to divert.

Anyway, the major issue was that people don't like sonic booms, once or twice, like listening to the space shuttle coming in over Orlando, is a novelty, but 10 times an hour as the JFK-wherever flights pass over Detroit is not. Then there was the political pressure which we are seeing again now, the US was the major airline market, if you weren't flying in the US you weren't flying, and since the US didn't make Concorde their industry paid their government to exclude it. Right or wrong. If Boeing had been able to make one maybe we would all be flying the Atlantic in two hours now? It will be interesting to see if Boeing can exclude the A-380 and it will be interesting to see if the bits of 787 built by Fuji and Kawasaki can be joined to the bits the rest of the world makes. Always interesting times in the aviation world.

Anyway, unless the world can find a good source of energy, and spending energy splitting hydrogen out of water isn't it, then we aren't going to be making many more things that burn fuel by the hundreds of tons per day for our travel convenience.

Answer 6

designing and building a reasonably sized supersonic aircraft cost about 3 times as much as building a large subsonic one. Not to mention that the operating cost of supersonic planes is waaay higher. This would result in very expensive tickets that pretty much nobody will want to pay, and a loss for the airlines.

Answer 7

Its called "economy of scale" the more passengers per flight the fewer flights. Fewer flights less overhead costs. Can you imagine what air traffic nightmare there would be if there were 5 or 6 times as many flights as we have now. Couldn't be done. Faster , especially supersonic, is expensive.

Answer 8

This old way of thinking is so ingrained in the air passenger system that it's hard for the industry to change. The air craft we see today have been on the drawing board for years before implication. personally I think the jet liner has seen it's day. the industry needs to make major and sweeping changes to the transport methods in use today.I'd like to see the return of the dirigible rigid air ship. if the engine quits you don't fall out of the sky and with helium as the lifting agent there very safe. This more faster more bigger mind set is so out dated these days it's pathetic.

Answer 9

Profit, shareholder expectations (dividends), revenue, economies of scale....and having to build fewer aircraft to carry more people.Did I mention profits?

Also people don't like to be bumped or told the flight is full. And if there are faster planes with fewer seats do you think that will make that bumped passenger say...gee, thanks OK with me.

Answer 10

I can't understand it myself, because who wants to go through customs/immigration with 500 other people from the same flight? With supersonic flight, the largest constraint is fuel efficiency, I think.