The Elon Musk of aviation plans to cut your flight time to New York in half

Telegraph

19 hours ago

My journey to meet Blake Scholl, the founder of Boom Supersonic, earlier this month took 24 hours. I got up at 7am in London and after a series of flight cancellations and delays finally landed in Denver, Colorado, at midnight – 7am the next day London time. If only there were a quicker way, I say to Scholl when we meet eight eye-stinging hours later at the headquarters of his firm, near Centennial Airport in the city's southern suburbs. As soon as 2030 there may well be, he replies.
'We'll be able to get you from London to Denver in six to seven hours, so, with the time difference, you will arrive at the same time you left.'
The 44-year-old techie is standing in front of the test version of the plane that he hopes will be flying me at 1,300mph over water – twice the speed of a subsonic airliner. Already, the XB-1 supersonic demonstrator has completed 13 test flights and broken the sound barrier six times. Scholl is confident it will morph from a single-seater into a larger jet, called Overture, carrying 60 to 80 passengers between any cities on the planet. This successor to Concorde will 'transform our lives, the way we meet people, do business, go on vacation'.
Scholl's tech background – before founding Boom in 2014, he worked for Amazon and Groupon – means he has been dubbed the Elon Musk of aviation. He certainly shares Musk's do-or-die ambition and his blue-sky rhetoric. 'Whenever I watch the videos of Concorde's last landing in 2003, it makes me want to cry,' he tells me moments after we've met. 'From the Wright brothers to Concorde, every generation of aeroplanes was faster but we've gone backwards. We're living in the dark ages. The world needs supersonic flight.'
Not only will Overture be able to fly me from London to Denver in no time at all, Scholl promises that it will get me from London, Paris, Madrid or Berlin to New York before I've even left Europe. Since Overture will fly supersonic over land, New York to San Francisco will only take four hours, meaning I will be able to leave New York at 9am and land in California at about 10am local time. Eventually, any two points on the planet can be connected super-fast with a refuelling stop or two.
Did he just say 'supersonic over land'? Concorde's main drawback was that it could not fly significantly faster than
conventional jets over land because the sonic boom it generated as it broke the sound barrier could be heard on the ground as loud as thunder. Scholl claims to have solved that problem – and he has one key backer who agrees it's time to go supersonic anywhere possible: Donald Trump. Last month, Trump issued an executive order overturning the decision by the Federal Aviation Administration in 1973 to impose a subsonic speed limit on commercial flights over the US. Now, says Scholl, ' The sky's the limit!'
OK, OK, but before we talk more, can I have a go, please, I ask. Flights in the three-engine XB-1 demonstrator are for test pilots only – men like Boom's former US Navy 'top gun' Tristan Brandenburg. Luckily, Brandenburg, 39 – call sign 'Geppetto' – is on hand to show me how to go supersonic in the simulator.
I take my seat and he teaches me how to push forward the throttle levers far harder than I initially dare. I tear down the runway at a virtual airport in a virtual Mojave Desert, racing past ancient Boeing 747 jets ready to be cut up for scrap. In less than 30 frantic seconds during my third attempt, I'm airborne, desert sand racing underneath the glass panels in the floor and a cloudless sky filling the cockpit window.
As I climb and level off, I hit 480 knots. 'That's more than 500mph,' Brandenburg tells me. Soon I hit 'Mach point-eight. Keep forward pressure on the nose, so it doesn't slow down. Mach point-nine. And now you're going supersonic. Yeah! Mach 1.01. Max speed 1.18. Real nice. Crushed it.'
The sense of speed in the simulator is almost as good as that which I felt when I flew Concorde. I took 'the quick plane' between London and New York in the early noughties and loved the three-hour trips more than any other journeys before or since. My favourite bit? Not the supersonic gin 'n' tonic. Not the celebrity bingo – Joan Collins (check), Gwyneth Paltrow (check), Madonna (check). But the gut punch of the volcanic Rolls-Royce Olympus engines that took me to 69,000ft in minutes, as I watched the speedometer at the front of the cabin tick up to almost 1,500mph – more than a mile every three seconds. Peering out of the window, I could see the afterburners turning the sky orange.
Scholl argues that Concorde did not prove to be a lasting success less because it could not fly super-fast over land and more because it was too heavy, too thirsty, too uncomfortable and too expensive. Overture will fix all those flaws, he promises, enabling its operators – the major airlines, he hopes – to make money.
It will be made of lightweight carbon fibre and have more efficient turbofan engines. This will mean that although it will still consume fuel at two to three times the rate of a subsonic airliner, the amount per business-class passenger – supersonic jets are all business class – will be far less than Concorde.
He adds that Overture will be able to fly using 100 per cent sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). 'I want to live in a future of abundant travel and abundant energy on a planet that we take care of. We thought we had to choose Earth or human life. I think we can have both. That requires innovation.'
The development of more plentiful and cheaper supplies of SAF is crucial to the future of sustainable travel, 'and because people will pay more for supersonic travel, it makes supersonic jets a great first customer for SAF. We are going to stimulate the market for SAF.' Critics dismiss this as wishful thinking since the priority for SAF production will be the far greater number of subsonic airliners.
Concorde was cramped with narrow seats in pairs on either side of the central aisle and tiny windows, but Scholl promises Overture 'will feel like a large Boeing or Airbus. You won't have to choose between speed and comfort.' The ceilings will be 8ft high with overhead bins in the middle, not at the sides, to increase the sense of space. Most seats will have an aisle and a window, which will be four times bigger than those on Concorde. 'You can really see whether the Earth is curved,' he jokes. There will be two pilots and four flight attendants.
Fares for each of the 60-plus passengers will be set by airlines, but Scholl expects them to be about £5,000 return from London to New York. In real terms, that's less than a third of the cost of my ticket in 2001, which was £8,279, or about £15,575 in today's money. 'Concorde, with 100 seats and a near $20,000 ticket, made no sense, even on New York to London, the best possible route. It flew half-empty. If it had been half the size, the fares would have been lower and it might have worked economically. That's what we're creating.'
Henry Harteveldt, of Atmosphere Research Group, the leading US airline industry analyst, is not so sure. Airlines, he argues, see supersonic jets as 'revenue-focused aircraft – a way to generate more cash with a premium product'.
It would be easy to dismiss Scholl as a kid who read too many space comics, but he has a solid entrepreneurial track record. He built an internet service provider in his parents' basement in Ohio. After graduating in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University, he joined Amazon in 2001 as a software engineer and ended up with a $300 million account in digital marketing. He left Amazon in 2006, later setting up an online-shopping software provider, Kima Labs, which he sold to Groupon, the discount-coupon provider, in 2012. Scholl joined the firm. 'There is nothing like working on internet coupons to make you ask yourself: 'Is this why I'm on Earth?'' He soon decided to follow his passion.
He had started flying in college and got his licence in 2007. The same year he saw Concorde at The Museum of Flight in Seattle. 'I remember thinking, why was the most amazing passenger aeroplane ever made in a museum when there was nothing better in the skies?' A few years later he founded Boom, while living in San Francisco. He moved to Denver the following year and soon set up Boom's first hangar at Centennial Airport, with a crew of employees plucked from other aerospace startups. He wanted to apply fresh Silicon Valley thinking to aviation. 'I don't think it's an accident that the first new rocket company and the first new car company in the US in a century were created by somebody who wasn't from those industries. Elon Musk had the benefit of fresh vision.'
Musk is one of Scholl's high-profile supporters. The former 'first bro' was pictured with Trump and a model of Overture in the Oval Office. OpenAI boss Sam Altman is an investor, as is former United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz. Mike Bannister, Concorde's former chief pilot, is an adviser.
This administration is supersonic pic.twitter.com/7fCiOmC4Mb
— Blake Scholl 🛫 (@bscholl) February 14, 2025
Airlines are interested. Boom has 130 orders and pre-orders from American Airlines, United Airlines and Japan Airlines. 'If you just take people who are flying first or business class today on routes where Overture will have enough traffic to fill the seats and make money, airlines are going to need 1,400 Overtures,' Scholl says. Boom aims to produce 33 aircraft a year at its factory in North Carolina, completed in June last year, and to triple that number as new production lines come on stream. Each will cost about $200 million. The first commercial flights will take off around 2030, provided everything goes according to Scholl's plan and the FAA approves Overture as safe.
Neither of the original operators of Concorde, British Airways and Air France, have yet formally expressed an interest, I point out. 'They'll do this eventually but they've got a Concorde hangover,' Scholl says. In spite of its glamour and elegance, Concorde was not a commercial success. It struggled to make profits and never recouped its multi-billion pound development costs. And 25 years ago this month 113 people died when an Air France Concorde crashed soon after take-off from Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport.
Concorde's would-be successor faces its own huge hurdles, as bigger rival outfits have found. Boeing had a go at creating a successor to Concorde, backing a startup called Aerion, but that closed in 2021 after running out of money.
Has Scholl really overcome the biggest hurdle of all, the sonic boom, I ask. He insists that by slowing down Overture to 800-900mph – still faster than the speed of sound – and using complex software to adjust speed and altitude for atmospheric conditions, notably temperature and wind gradients at high altitude, the sound waves it generates refract upwards, not downwards to Earth. XB-1 broke the sound barrier six times on its test flights without creating a detectable sonic boom. 'I was there and I was disappointed,' Scholl says. 'I wanted to hear it. I wanted to call it 'the boom heard around the world', but it was the boom heard absolutely nowhere.'
Some see Overture's engines as a potentially fatal flaw. XB-1's engines are pinched off a Canadian fighter jet. Britain's Rolls-Royce was supposed to develop turbofan jets for Overture but backed out because, it said, supersonic flight was no longer a priority. 'I'm not convinced the current team assembled has the experience or depth or capability to develop a supersonic engine,' says Brian Foley, an aviation consultant who worked for French aerospace concern Dassault Aviation.
Harteveldt adds: 'If Rolls-Royce believed in the market opportunity, it would have maintained its commitment to Boom. It says a lot that not only did Rolls back out but no existing engine-maker stepped in to take its place.' Scholl insists he can make his own engines – 'faster, cheaper, better'.
More people are flying than ever before as business travel recovers post-Covid and YOLO revenge spending boosts snazzy leisure travel. But is speed as important as it once was, I wonder. Airlines are rushing to introduce ever more luxurious perks for fancy flyers – bars, showers, double beds and Wi-Fi faster than many of us enjoy on the ground – which means wealthy passengers can work, rest and play at 39,000ft. 'Nobody gets on that aeroplane to get on it, however comfortable. They get on it to go where they want to go,' Scholl retorts. He has a point. Qantas will soon launch 21-hour non-stop flights between London and Sydney, and early demand, even in the economy cabin, is strong.
Ah, Australia. It's a long way away – much farther than Overture will be able to fly. Its range is only around 5,000 miles. That leaves plenty of the routes Scholl claims Overture will be able to fly well out of reach. 'Seattle to Tokyo is right at the limit,' he concedes. But, he points out, the first Overture 'will be the first generation. Five thousand miles' range is where we start. Then there's gonna be a second aeroplane and a third, which will fly further. We're gonna do one new aeroplane every five years.' Over time he hopes to shorten the flight time from London to Australia from almost 24 hours to about 14, with two refuelling stops, in the Gulf and Singapore, 'which will be so fast you won't get out of your seat. You'll be on the ground for less than a half-hour.'
To get anywhere remotely near that, or London to New York services, Boom will need cash and plenty of it to build and certify Overture. After initially saying it needed to raise $6 to $8 billion, Scholl now claims 'for $2 to $3 billion' he can get to the stage where customer payments begin funding operations. Boom has so far only raised $600 million from investors, a meagre one fifth of what he needs. 'There's… There's something I can't tell you. Watch this space,' he teases. He's expecting another round of investment? 'Yeah. And we figured out something that's going to massively reduce the cost. But I can't tell you yet. Later, later this year I will.'
He's ever bullish but I remind him that he once said 'there's no guarantee of success here. Statistically, failure is the most likely outcome.' He replies: 'Oh, it's still true. We've had technical setbacks. We've had supplier setbacks. We've had deals fall apart. Yet there's no reason we can't make it work. Look at our record. The analysts said a startup can't build a supersonic jet. Only governments have ever done that. We built one. Then they said there's no market for supersonic. But airlines are ordering. Now they say we'll never be able to build an engine. So far, we've proved them wrong on everything.'
And, he insists, he will carry on proving the nay-sayers wrong. 'The day we broke the sound barrier I stood with the team, and I said: 'The reason we're here today is because we didn't give up when reasonable people would have given up.' The way we get Overture done is a whole lot of not giving up. We're not going to give up until you can see it right there.' He points up to the sky. 'I'll save you a seat.'