Boom Supersonic: breaking the sound and the travel barrier
“Supersonic is coming back, bigger than it’s ever been before,” explained Boom Supersonic founder and CEO Blake Scholl, speaking to Aerospace Global News. With around 130 orders already placed for Boom Supersonic’s ‘Overture’ airliner far outstripping the 14 Concordes ever to enter service, “that’s just scratching the surface,” he continued.
The company’s state-of-the-art ‘Overture Superfactory’ in Greensborough, North Carolina is designed to produce 33 aircraft a year, with space for two or three final assembly lines. Overture 1 – an all-business class configuration – aims to offer fares “about three quarters less than those charged on Concorde,” meaning the experience can be available to “tens of millions of passengers”.
Subsequent models will aim to “make supersonic flight available to everyone who flies,” and round 600 routes on the planet will benefit from Overture (including crossing the Atlantic in around three and a half hours).
The purpose of supersonic flight is to “break not only the sound barrier, but the travel barrier,” Blake highlighted. However, alongside the need for flights to be fast and affordable, they also need to be sustainable. Boom is designed to be as quiet as the latest generation sub-sonic aircraft, and Overture’s ‘Symphony’ engine will also be compatible with 100% SAF.
Meanwhile, the XB-1 – the subscale demonstrator – is expected to be back in the air imminently, following some minor amendments since the aircraft’s first flight in March 2024. However, as not everyone can make it out to California’s Mojave Desert, “we can bring it here to Farnborough to share it with our partners, our customers, our regulators, and let everyone get a sense of the future that’s coming!” concluded Scholl.
