Why is this interesting? - Monday, April 8

Colin here. I’ve been doing a good amount of long haul flying lately and the thought I generally have on hour 14 (after having slept and read a book and three New Yorkers) is when will the future arrive? When will our tech be sufficiently advanced so as to take away at least some of the time and pain for flights like this?

I have a friend who is an Emirates captain. Every time he tells someone what he does, their mind jumps to the glory days of air travel: when everyone boarded in their best attire and pilots were royalty. Unfortunately for him, those glory days are long gone. For years they’ve been shortening rest periods and every time I see him he looks fried. He flies the A380, which is exclusively long haul for Emirates, and no matter how much of a pro you are, the fatigue eventually catches up, taking away at least some of the joy.

Thankfully, small advances in technology have been arriving. At the same time Airbus was working on the A380, a plane they’ve discontinued after just fourteen years, Boeing was building the much smaller Dreamliner. Rather than making it gigantic, they kept it fuel-efficient and packed it with innovations like technology to maintain higher humidity and lower cabin pressure, leaving you feeling a bit more human at the end of a long flight.

Why is this interesting?

A new project is trying to change the dynamic completely.

According to Bloomberg:

General Electric Co. has completed its initial design for the first commercial supersonic aircraft engine in decades, a major hurdle for developing private planes and, perhaps eventually, jetliners that fly faster than the speed of sound.

The twin-shaft, twin-fan design will slash travel times by hours after 50 years in which the average speed of private jets has increased only 10 percent, GE said in a statement Monday. The engine -- called Affinity -- is being designed for Aerion, a startup backed by Texas billionaire Robert Bass, who has been trying to develop a supersonic business jet for more than a decade.

Stealing time from time is always a valuable proposition. And while the industry is fixated on the new ultra long haul flight trend with routes like Doha to Auckland (16 hours, 20 minutes), the ability to get from point a to point b anywhere in the world in half the time will change business for the better.

I wrote a Skift column on the topic back in December. Aerion’s CEO, explained how this value proposition can be real sooner than we think. “Imagine that you have a young family in, say, Dallas, and a business joint venture in Shanghai. You need to go there a lot. But it’s a 35-hour proposition to get there (check American Airlines), and it takes a toll on you physically. It keeps you apart from your young family. It hampers your ability to work effectively with your colleagues in Shanghai. Suppose we could make that a 12- or 14-hour trip, including a quick connection.”

Now if you extrapolate that story, it is easy to see that the effects on travel, productivity, and even capitalism as a whole can be significantly affected.

But in the meantime, we will patiently endure the status quo, binging on Hugh Grant rom-coms and Deadliest Catch reruns. (CJN)

Map of the Day:

The county share of people 25+ born in state. Fascinating to see how little movement you have in the middle of the country. Via James Gross. (NRB)

Quick Links:

• Trial by Fire, the story by David Grann about the possible wrongful conviction and death of a Texas man, has been turned into a film directed by Ed Zwick. The trailer came out last week and is set for release May 17. (NRB)

• On Friday some well known graphic designers and firms redesigned their logos in Comic Sans. #ComicSansTakeover was to raise awareness of designing for people with disabilities. Despite the widespread ridicule, Comic Sans is apparently much easier for people with dyslexia to read. From The Cut: “The irregular shapes of the letters in Comic Sans allow [people with disabilities] to focus on the individual parts of words … While many fonts use repeated shapes to create different letters, such as a ‘p’ rotated to made a ‘q,’ Comic Sans uses few repeated shapes, creating distinct letters (although it does have a mirrored ‘b’ and ‘d’).” (NRB)

• Saudi Aramco, the oil company of the Saudi government/royal family, reported it’s earnings and income for the first time last week: $224 billion and $111 billion respectively. That’s insane. [Via Felix Salmon’s excellent Axios Edge newsletter.] (NRB)

Thanks for reading,

Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN)