EGBM,
Actually you mention one which I forgot - Concorde
. That
was a real change. I shall go and do several rounds of
at my foolish oversight and beg forgiveness from the PPRuNe community for doing so.
But yes I think you are right - the old tube-with-wings has been pretty much 'it' since they figured out how to carry more than two punters, a couple of pigs and a mailbag.
Boeing tried to break the mold just a bit with the Sonic Cruiser... bit it didn't 'fly', literally or figuratively. They did say, when launching the 787, that a lot of the work they did on the Sonic Cruiser - aerodynamics, composites - then got put into the 787 but the main difference is that, not going up into the transonic area, the operating economics are going to be much more reliable.