But eastbound makes a lot less sense, unless you're just trying to save time. Because flying at night eastbound won't make you gain much compared to a regular red eye and flying during the day, you'll land at night...
Flying east fast after a day of meetings means you get in bed on time.
The above poster is correct - supersonics are suboptimal for eastbound, especially when you consider they can only be used at speed over the ocean.
A super sonic flight that leaves JFK at 6PM arrives at 2AM in LHR after 3 hours of flying plus a 5 hour time zone change.
It's much more optimal to take a lie flat seat on a traditional aircraft, get a decent nights sleep on the flight, land at 7AM, shower at the lounge, and charge forth with the day.
My view is that the lie flat bed is really what made supersonic obsolete, and I see Boom as largely a folly.
I think if I had a decent internet connection (happening more and more) and comfortable seat I'd happily take a 7/8 hour flight over a 5 hour one in a coach-style seat.
It does make me appreciate human engineering though. When you think about all the parts that work correctly day in and day out to have these longs flights run back and forth nearly non-stop.
100% this. After 16 hours, I could have kissed the ground when I walked off that plane. At some point, after maybe 8-10 hours, order seems to break down a bit. People stop caring so much about keeping clean, the plane starts to get really cluttered and nasty, food ground into the carpet. I feel for the cleaning crews that have to spruce up the interior after a really long international flight.
I still remember the first time I flew home from the north, we had taken off from Dubai and were headed to Seattle, which goes over the north pole. I watched that silly map more than I should have (it just makes things slower, I'm sure...) and I was so elated the moment we went 'feet dry' over North America. And then I realized that we still had six plus hours to go, more than if we were starting at the east coast. I was so sad for a few minutes I could have cried.
It was not fun.
Its always a tradeoff of comfort vs speed.
