The next generation of supersonic passenger jets are coming

SST travel is coming back, but it will be for business aviation passengers first. It’s been over 15 years since Concorde (the sled) was up in our skies flying faster than the speed of sound. New technology is advancing efforts to bring back supersonic passenger jets, an area dominated by the Concorde for almost three decades. Concorde’s last commercial flight was in October 2003, and had a maximum cruising speed of 2,179 km (1,354 miles) per hour, or Mach 2.04 (more than twice the speed of sound), allowing the aircraft to reduce the flight time between London and New York to about three hours.

Several major players have entered the next generation of supersonic passenger jet market the last few years, planning to offer Mach 1.4 to Mach 2 trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific non-stop travel, including ‘Boomless Cruise,’ which means they will be able to fly without creating a sonic boom at the ground level. They all started as concepts initially, but in 2019 and 2020 they have all entered the next steps in their design, development and testing. The reality of SST travel will become realty very soon, could be as early as 2024 or 2025.

Hundreds of daily routes would be viable: at Mach 2 over water, New York City to London would be 3 hours and 15 minutes apart; Miami and Sao Paulo would be 3 hours and 48 minutes apart. With 4,500 nmi (8,300 km) of range, transpacific flights would require a refueling stop: San Francisco and Tokyo or Beijing would be 5 hours and 30 minutes apart; Los Angeles and Sydney would be 6 hours and 45 minutes apart.

The US Air force announced several Presidential and Executive Airlift Directorate contracts (September 2020) with aircraft manufacturers to begin development of a supersonic aircraft that could function as Air Force One. Contracts have been signed with Exosonic, Hermeus, and Boom.

Supersonic aviation startup Boom Technology targets $5,000 fares for a New York to London round-trip, while the same on Concorde cost $20,000 adjusted for inflation; it was its only profitable route. The same fuel burn enables fares similar to subsonic business class among other factors. For long-range routes like San Francisco–Tokyo and Los Angeles–Sydney, 30 lie-flat first-class seats could be proposed alongside 15 business-class seats.

In March 2016, Richard Branson confirmed that Virgin Group holds options for 10 Boom Overture aircraft and Virgin Galactic‘s subsidiary The Spaceship Company will aid in manufacturing and testing the jet. An unnamed European carriers also holds options for 25 aircraft. At the 2017 Paris Air Show, 51 commitments were added for a backlog of 76 with significant deposits. In December 2017, Japan Airlines was confirmed to have pre-ordered up to 20 jets among the commitments to 76 from five airlines. On June 3, 2021, United Airlines announced they had signed an agreement to purchase 15 Overture aircraft with an additional 35 options, expecting to start passenger flights by 2029.

Boom CEO Blake Scholl thinks 2,000 supersonic jets will connect 500 cities and promises £2,000 for London to New York one-way, comparable with existing subsonic business class.

The Boom Overture is a proposed Mach 1.7 (1,000 kn; 1,150 mi/h; 1,852 km/h), 55-passenger supersonic transport with 4,500 nmi (8,300 km) of range, which is planned to be introduced in 2029. Overture will be the fastest and most sustainable supersonic airliner, flying twice as fast as any commercial aircraft today.

Boom is in the process of building the XB-1, which will be used to test and refine the final design of Overture, the passenger commercial airliner it eventually plans to build. Already, Boom says the development of the subscale XB-1 has led to improvements of the design elements it’s going to be using to construct Overture. The flight controls system and engines on XB-1 are complete, and the company is now working on finishing touches on the cockpit construction, with about half of the work still left to go on the fuselage and a third of the construction of the wings still to be done. Its first flight is currently planned for sometime later this year.

The XB-1 demonstrator aircraft will be tested with support from Flight Research, Inc., with Boom hoping to fly the aircraft over the Mojave desert in a stretch used for supersonic testing. As part of the deal, Flight Research will be providing Boom with a hanger at the Mojave Air and Space Port to fly from, and a T-38 Talon supersonic trainer aircraft, which will be used both to train the XB-1’s test pilots and to trail the Boom aircraft for observation while it’s in flight.

Production on NASA’s new X-59 supersonic X-plane despite closures and delays in the space industry caused by the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. In a March 20, 2020 statement, NASA officials said that “in California, work continues by Lockheed Martin on X-59, NASA’s first large-scale, piloted X-plane in more than 30 years, while NASA oversight and inspections will be conducted almost exclusively virtually.”

“Lockheed Martin is continuing with X-59 production operations, and the only on-site NASA presence is a Quality Assurance representative when needed for the GMIPs (Government Mandatory Inspection Points),” said Craig Nickol, NASA’s Low Boom Flight Demonstrator project manager.

The final assembly for the supersonic plane, which was officially named X-59 QueSST in 2018, was greenlit during a critical design review in 2019. The plane is designed to travel overland faster than the speed of sound. But, unlike earlier supersonic planes, its main draw is that it will supposedly create an ultraquiet sonic boom, making it much less of a disturbance to the general public.

Virgin Galactic‘s subsidiary The Spaceship Company has announced its plan to enter the supersonic passenger jet market, having signed an agreement with Rolls-Royce to develop an aircraft which seats up to 19 passengers and which can cruise at Mach 3. The private space travel company said it completed the mission concept review and obtained authorization from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to outline its certification framework. It did not reveal any projected timeline for the aircraft’s type certification and entry into service.

The Richard Branson founded company underlined that it hopes to benefit from Rolls-Royce’s experience as the engine manufacturer for the only certified Western-built supersonic passenger aircraft, the Concorde.

The company said that the aircraft will have configurable interiors and will be a trail blaizer in regards to the use of sustainable aviation fuels. In 2016, Virgin Group confirmed it had ten options for rival supersonic jet Boom Technology Overture, with Virgin Galactic poised to aid in the development of the aircraft. The Overture, however, will be a much larger aircraft capable of seating up to 55 passengers.

Boom’s long-term plan envisions possibly developing a larger commercial supersonic airliner, which could start off as a 24-seater and grow to 100 to 150 seats, though that could be many years in the future. Much further out, Boom and the other players see possibilities for hypersonics and said progress has been made on reaching near hypersonic in the range in the Mach 4 to 4.5 range. This speed is the ultimate vision of getting passengers anywhere around the world within three hours, Vice said.

Boston based Spike Aerospace claim the S-512 will have a Mach 1.6 civilian aircraft available. It’s developing a 12 to 18 person quiet supersonic jet that is aiming to fly Dubai to New York non-stop in nearly half the time it currently takes a subsonic aircraft. They are developing the $125 million plane with the help of Greenpoint Technologies and Siemens.

Aerion Supersonic recently got out of the SST race. It could not raise the funding for producing of its AS2 supersonic private jet. With a stunning design and incredible speed of Mach 1.4 with 12 passengers, the AS2 was very innovative and sleek, able to fly twice as fast as a commercial jet.

Time will tell if the aerospace giants will enter the SST competition. Boeing had several projects in the 1970s and Airbus’s Aerospatiale produced the amazing Concorde with British Aerospace in the 1960’s and it entered service 1970’s with Air France and British Airways.