This Company Wants Everyone To Fly On Its Future Supersonic Plane And It Might Actually Happen

On November 26, 2003, the Concorde supersonic commercial airliner made its final flight. After its mighty engines shut down, the era of supersonic commercial travel ended. Enthusiastic engineers and aviators have been trying to replicate the magic of the Concorde ever since and on January 28, one private company succeeded in a major step to making a modern Concorde a reality. Boom Supersonic just took its XB-1 test plane past the sound barrier, a critical accomplishment in building an airliner that could get passengers from London to New York in as little as 3.5 hours.

The XB-1 and its pilot’s achievement is even bigger than my lede up there suggests it is. Where there have been civil supersonic jets built in the past, none of the operational examples were built right here on American soil. So, even without the context of this company’s goal to make a supersonic airliner, Boom has already done something pretty awesome.

Boom Supersonic has been around for over a decade, but I haven’t written about it for all of this time. Several companies and entities have teased making a sequel to Concorde since 2003. Not a single one has entered production and some of these ambitious projects have failed so hard that their companies aren’t even around anymore. A number of concepts haven’t even gotten much further than renders. Getting a test plane past the sound barrier is a huge deal. Sure, while Boom Supersonic is not at the finish line with its Overture airliner project, it has gotten far closer to finishing the race than any other modern company.

However, the Boom team still have a lot of headwinds to beat, including the same difficulty that took the Concorde out of the sky.

Fantasies Of Speed

It’s sort of amazing that the Concorde even happened in the first place. The de Havilland Comet and the Boeing 707 helped usher in the jet age, a time when flashy, high-speed aircraft flew above bad weather and delivered passengers to far-flung destinations exponentially faster than the propeller-driven aircraft of before.

These aircraft made the world feel a lot smaller for those lucky enough to fly in them. The people who flew on them must have thought the speed was magical. But even before then, there was an obsession with going even faster. The studies that led to the creation of the Concorde began in 1954 and the aircraft would enter service 22 years later. The Concordes were absolute rockstars, as noted by the Smithsonian National Air And Space Museum:

The Concorde entered service with Air France and British Airways in 1976 and rose to fame in no time. It was the transatlantic talk of the town as it was staggeringly fast and luxurious, with excellent service, cuisine, and exclusive airport lounges. With speed and luxury came a hefty price tag of $12,000 for a round trip. Accounting for inflation that would amount to $66,000 today. Concorde shuttled wealthy and often high-profile customers. The supersonic aircraft’s tagline, “Arrive Before You Leave,” advertised its ability to fly faster than the time zones changed.

For most of the Concorde’s 27 years of service, the vast majority of the flights were along two routes: New York to London and New York to Paris. It did eventually expand its routes to include destinations in South America, Bahrain, and Singapore. Even though this expansion represented a significant milestone in the history of supersonic travel, showcasing the versatility and potential for Concorde’s global connectivity, it quickly failed and only the two initial routes remained.

The Smithsonian notes that one of the Concorde’s biggest issues was just that it was outrageously expensive. The governments of Britain and France thought the Concorde would cost $130 million in 1970s money, but it ballooned to $2.8 billion. The governments also thought there was a demand for a few hundred units. Ultimately, just 20 left the factory.

Concorde’s only competitor, the Tupolev Tu-144 (above), entered into passenger service in late 1977, ending less than a year later in 1978 after a tragic crash and a slew of issues. Boeing was also brewing up a competitor in the form of the 2707, but that never went into production. The Concorde really was the only game in town for supersonic passenger travel. Yet, it still failed, from the Smithsonian:

It’s surreal to think about the time of supersonic commercial flight. The thought of being able to fly home to Kathmandu, Nepal, from DC in under 9 hours would be amazing! Here, the question arises: If such a marvel exists, why are our international flights so long, sometimes over 14-16 hours? Where did the Concordes go? Despite being studied by 250 British aeronautical engineers for 5,000 hours (about seven months) of testing, Concorde flights came to a screeching halt after only 27 years of operation on October 24, 2003. The reason? Excessive cost, high fares, and loud noise. On a regular flight, Concordes consumed 6,771 gallons of fuel, which quickly exceeded the profit made from the flight. In addition to that, only a total of 20 Concordes were built and no airline ordered them except for Air France and British Airways, who had to as they were state-run airlines at the time.

Adding on to the unprofitable cost of operation, the restrictions of supersonic travel contributed to the downfall of the Concorde. Since they flew at twice the speed of sound, their flight was restricted to only flying over the ocean as it sent a strong shockwave known as a sonic boom into the air that could shatter the glass of the houses if it flew over residential areas. Besides, when a Concorde flew over a city, it made a lot of noise, leading to numerous complaints every time. Moreover, the emerging environmental movement was entirely against the Concorde. What was once synonymous with supersonic and luxury soon became synonymous with noise and exhaust emissions. Due to concerns over its noise levels, the Concorde was restricted flying transatlantic routes, taking off and landing in New York, Washington, London, and Paris.

Matters were made worse after the Concorde’s single fatal crash in 2000, which further tarnished the aircraft’s image.

You might think it would be foolish to try something like this again, but that hasn’t stopped several entities. In 2003, the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (now Airbus SE) announced it was considering a supersonic transport. That didn’t go anywhere. In 2005, the Japanese Space Agency announced it was testing a scale model of a supersonic transport. Sadly, that project never produced anything. Later, Japan and Europe joined forces on the Zero Emission Hyper Sonic Transport project, which hasn’t produced anything but sometimes still appears in articles with absurd headlines.

Then there are the companies that died trying to make supersonic transports like Aerion Corporation and Supersonic Aerospace International. In short, the supersonic transport space has been an absolute bloodbath, and while there’s been a lot of talk and even some development, nobody has really come close to putting your butt in the seat of an aircraft that flies at twice the speed of sound or faster.

The Boom Overture

This might make you wonder why companies keep trying to make supersonic airliners happen. The explanation is that the science and engineering behind supersonic aircraft are getting better. At the same time, Boom Supersonic thinks it can convert some of the millions of business class and first class passengers into passengers on its plane.

Boom Supersonic was founded in Denver in 2014 as Boom Technology. Its founder is Blake Scholl, a man with a resume full of tech company experience. So, how does a tech guy get into starting a supersonic transport manufacturer? Scholl says he’s been enamored with aviation since he was a kid and he wanted to revive the Concorde ever since seeing one in a museum.

Boom has since gotten over $700 million from a mind-boggling setlist of tech bros, venture capital funds, investment funds, Japan Airlines, and so many more.

Boom’s promise is the Overture, a supersonic commercial aircraft that would cruise at Mach 1.7, seat 64 to 80 people, have a range of 4,888 miles, and do so economically enough that the ticket for a ride in an Overture would cost about the same as a first-class ticket on a typical aircraft. Boom says the Overture would fly twice as fast over water as current airliners and 20 percent faster over land.

The Overture itself is crawling closer to reality thanks to its test plane. In 2019, the company finally got enough funding to prove its concept with the XB-1 “Baby Boom” demonstrator, a manned aircraft one-third-scale of what the Overture is supposed to be. The demonstrator rolled out on Oct. 7, 2020, but didn’t take its first flight until 2024.

The Test Plane

This little guy, registration N990XB, has a triplet of General Electric J85-15 turbojets good for 12,000 pounds of thrust. These engines are better known for their use in the Northrop F-5 and the T-38. The XB-1 is 62.6 feet long and features a delta wing spreading out 21 feet.

Of course, the whole idea of this aircraft is to test out a lot of the tech that will be used in the Overture. It has an augmented reality vision system so that pilots can see past the long nose during takeoff and landing, thus eliminating the need for the Concorde’s “droop snoot.”

The aircraft also benefits from aerodynamics crafted from computational fluid dynamics, a fuselage packing tons of carbon fiber, and engine intakes designed to slow supersonic air to subsonic speeds as the aircraft flies. This is said to convert kinetic energy into pressure energy, allowing the XB-1 to fly using conventional engines rather than the specialized units found on the Concorde.

Boom has been taking the XB-1 into the Bell X-1 Supersonic Corridor (above), a long strip of airspace named after the X-1 rocket plane. Boom has been testing the XB-1 since its first flight and until now the XB-1’s top speed was Mach 0.95. On January 28, test pilot Tristan “Geppetto” Brandenburg took off from the Mojave Air & Space Port in California and into the history books when he piloted the XB-1 to 35,290 feet before racing to Mach 1.122 (652 KTAS / 750 mph).

January 28 marked the first time a civil jet built in America officially crossed the sound barrier. While Brandenburg’s accomplishment is still off of the mark from Boom’s goal of a Mach 1.7 cruising speed and a Mach 2.2 top speed, this is still nothing short of fantastic. Especially since every other modern attempt at supersonic transport hasn’t gotten this far.

Along for the ride was a Dassault Mirage F1 safety chase plane flown by A.J. “Face” McFarland and a Northrop T-38 Talon which took pictures of the ride. The whole flight, which included three runs down the supersonic corridor, took a touch over 30 minutes. That’s how wicked fast this thing is.

As for the sonic boom issue, Boom says its aircraft will benefit from the latest research in sonic boom reduction in the hopes of reducing the impact of sonic booms over the ocean. Still, a reduced sonic boom is still a sonic boom and that’s a problem for flying over land. Boom’s solution for flying over land is to cruise the Overture at Mach 0.94, which is still faster than your typical subsonic airliner’s cruise.

Likewise, the company says its engines will be a bit quieter than the ones on the Concorde and the company expects the Overture should be about as loud as the commercial aircraft flying today.

All of that is super ambitious and Boom has a long way to go. Just last year it completed a factory to build the Overture. There are still tons of test flights to go and the engineers also have to turn what they learned with the XB-1 into a larger aircraft designed to carry passengers. As of 2022, Boom said it was expecting to put the Overture into service in 2029. So, being charitable — and it’s not uncommon for a project like this to experience a delay — your next supersonic flight is still years away.

Of course, that all assumes Boom pulls it off and airlines can actually sell even remotely affordable tickets to fly on an Overture. It looks like Boom has the foundation, but can it be made to work financially, something the Concorde failed at? All of that remains to be seen. But at least for now, Boom has made one step closer to bringing the dream of supersonic travel back from the dead.