Originally Posted by
Wizofoz
chorny,
True, but lets say he route in question is mainly used by business travellers. They want to be able to get from A-B in the morning, then home to A again that night, so will pay a premium for a more frequent service.
Indeed. Which favours smaller planes! After all, if there are twice as many flights flown by planes that are two times smaller, the time spent waiting for next plane is halved. Those two smaller planes might be RJ-s - which burn more fuel than a single narrowbody would - or turboprops. Yes, there would be more time spent aboard, but this could be more than compensated by less time spent waiting on ground.
Note that there was a time it took less than four hours to cross the Atlantic, if one of the two daily flights was at a suitable time. But subsonic flights of over 7 hours are so much more frequent, cheaper and more comfortable that the market for SST is hard to find...