Supersonic Flight: The Future of Fast Travel? 

Supersonic commercial aircraft were going to revolutionize the travel industry. The Concorde flew from London to New York in three hours, less than half the time of sub-sonic airliners. As technology improved, the aircraft would get faster and larger, shrinking time in the air so much that a businessman could hop on at breakfast time in New York, have a late-morning meeting in London followed by lunch, and be home in time for dinner.

            It didn’t quite turn out that way. The Concorde, developed jointly by the British and French, went into service in 1969 and flew its final flight on November 26, 2003, victim of high operating costs and safety concerns. Today’s airliners can reach about 85% of Mach 1, the speed of sound, but stay comfortably short of that barrier. That might change in the next few years, according to the Robb Report.

            Boom Supersonic, which started in 2014, has just become the first U.S. independent company to fly a prototype commercial aircraft faster than the speed of sound. Late in January, Boom’s XB-1 experimental jet reached Mach 1.122 (860.67mph) in test flights over the Mojave Desert, the same place where legendary pilot Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier for the first time back in 1947. It was the 11^th manned test flight for the aircraft over a 10-month period.

            Without receiving grants from the U.S. military, which many considered essential to develop a supersonic airliner, Boom got the job done. Its founder, Blake Scholl, said the flight “demonstrates that the technology for passenger supersonic flight has arrived.” The next step is to scale up the technology used in the XB-1 for the company’s airliner, the Overture. “Our ultimate goal is to bring the benefits of supersonic flight to everyone,” says Scholl.

            The Overture will be much larger than the XB-1, designed to carry up to 80 passengers. Boom expects the first commercial flights of the aircraft will be in 2029. A production facility is going up in North Carolina. The airline industry is on board; Boom has received 130 orders and pre-orders from American Airlines, United Airlines and Japan Airlines.

            Plans are to produce up to 66 Overtures per year. Many aviation experts think that’s not feasible, considering that Boom was forced to build its own supersonic engines after major aviation engine manufacturers turned down the project. Boom went ahead anyway, designing its own engines in-house, and it looks like they work. Already, Boom has long outlasted its better-funded competitor, Aerion, which spent 20 years developing its own project only to abruptly shut its doors in 2021, citing little investor appetite in the supersonic concept.

            The XB-1 is doing more than just proving that Boom’s engines work. The aircraft is also testing multiple technologies that will be aboard the Overture, including an augmented-reality vision system and digitally optimized aerodynamics. The aircraft is made almost entirely from carbon composite materials, which allow the designers to shape it more precisely.

What will it cost to fly aboard the Overture? That’s anybody’s guess right now. In 1977, during the Concorde’s heyday, a one-way ticket from New York to London, or vice versa, ran about $3,000 in today’s dollars. The cabin was cramped, with narrow seats, few amenities and the noise level was unacceptably loud by today’s standards. Boom has undoubtedly studied that aircraft and its history, and has the benefit of technology that’s half a century beyond Concorde.  

Another challenge facing Boom, and any other company that will want to get into supersonic passenger travel, will be possible restrictions on flying over populated areas. When an aircraft breaks the sound barrier, a sonic boom is generated, which is why Concorde was restricted to flying across the ocean. After taking off from Heathrow or JFK, the aircraft wouldn’t go supersonic until it was over the water. While transoceanic flights will certainly be the primary market for the airlines who will fly the Overture, they’ll certainly want to eventually move to overland routes like New York to Los Angeles. Today, a JFK-LAX flight takes just over six hours. Aboard the Overture, that could be reduced to just three. It doesn’t take a crystal ball to see that there would surely be a market for that kind of flight.     

For now, though, good old-fashioned subsonic airliners will take you pretty much wherever you want to go, and we’ll help you get on board. Give us a call!