Boeing dropped the Sonic Cruiser because the airlines convinced them to.
The speed increase over standard subsonic didn't gain you enough time to
make it worth paying extra for a ticket. For instance, London to New York
(the most profitable city pair in the world) is an average of about 7-8
hours. The Sonic Cruiser would only save about 45 - 60 mins but would cost
substantially more to operate. With a steady stream of 747s and 777s going
between the two, there's plenty of capacity at cheap prices so people would
have to value the time saved more than the money spent on the ticket. Time
saved wasn't going to be substantial enough to make it viable. It was only
supposed to be high-subsonic or low supersonic (can't remember which) but it
wasn't going to be Mach 2 like Concorde, so the speed difference was too
small.

Boeing were told to apply the same technological development to a
super-efficient (hence the "E" in 7E7) subsonic airliner of 767 size
(between 757 and 777) and then they'd have something. It won't replace the
777 as it's not intended to be that big (last time I touched the project,
anyway).

The two aircraft are based on different philosophies of how the airline
industry is going to grow - big gambles on both sides. Airbus reckon it'll
be about bigger hub-and-spoke operations like there tend to be now.
Emirates plan to suck large volumes of pax out of the US and Europe to Dubai
where they'll then parcel them out to A340s and such on to their final
destinations (or, in some cases, into other A380s for the bigger routes) or
to a follow-on hub.

Boeing reckon people will buy more point-to-point tickets, which won't
support larger airplanes but would be commercially viable with smaller and
more cost-efficient aircraft. It could finally open up that long-ignored
Columbus OH - London route that's been languishing unexploited for so long!

It's going to be interesting to see what a true Open Skies agreement will do
to this development in the industry. I think one or the other maker will
have a fleet of commercial dinosaurs on it's hands in about 10-15 years, but
it'll be anybody's guess at this point which one it'll be.

Shawn


"Dylan Smith" wrote in message
...
Now the A380 is surely a marvel of modern engineering, as is the Boeing
7E7 (787? Dreamliner?).

But fundamentally...it's yet another tube with wings with two or four
engines on pylons below the wings. I'm really disappointed that Boeing
dropped the Sonic Cruiser, a much more interesting proposition.

I'm also wonder what the point of the 7E7 is - surely the
midsize longhaul jet market is already adequately served by the 777?
Could they just not make incremental improvements to the 777 in the same
way they've done with the 737 for years?

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"