“Our ultimate goal is to bring the benefits of supersonic flight to everyone” – so says Blake Scholl, founder and chief executive of Boom Supersonic.
His company, based in Denver, is at the forefront of the race to find a successor to Concorde. The chosen name: Overture.
“Flights onboard Overture will cut travel times in half, ushering in the next era of faster travel,” the firm says. Boom Supersonic has attracted 130 orders, “pre-orders” and options from American Airlines, United and Japan Airlines.
Earlier this year the Colorado company’s supersonic test bed, known as XB1, became the first independently-funded jet to break the sound barrier.
Boom Supersonic says its production plane, known as Overture, will fly at 60,000 feet, the same as Concorde. The speed, Mach 1.7, is one-sixth slower – but still twice as fast as subsonic aircraft. It claims London–New York will take three hours 45 minutes, comparable with Concorde’s historic schedule.
Nostalgia for the supersonic flight has been particularly notable this week – 25 years after the Concorde Air France crash.
But had Concorde not been taken out of service on commercial grounds, it would surely by now have been grounded because of the environmental damage. On a London-New York trip, it would deafen bystanders at either end of the route and burn through 100 tons of aviation fuel; a Boeing 787 carries three times as many passengers for half as much fuel.
Boom Supersonic can fly on 100 per cent sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), though critics question the claimed benefits of this scarce substance.
A clue to a noisier environmental problem lies in the name: Boom. Concorde was unable to fly faster than the speed of sound overland because of the shockwave that supersonic aircraft create – which is experienced as a thunder-like boom by a person who is on the ground.
Boom Supersonic believes it has come up with a solution: reducing the aircraft’s speed while flying over land to about Mach 1.2. “By flying at a sufficiently high altitude at an appropriate speed for current atmospheric conditions, Overture’s sonic boom never reaches the ground,” the firm says.
“When in Boomless Cruise, speeds are 40-50 per cent faster than conventional airliners. This means a flight from New York to Los Angeles can be up to 90 minutes shorter.
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