America's skies may soon open up to supersonic travel. But there's still a big problem

CNN

a day ago

The skies over the United States could be wide open for much faster air travel in the near future. Not just because passenger planes capable of breaking the sound barrier are in development — for the first time ever, they could be allowed to do it over American soil.
Even during the days of Concorde, the supersonic plane that retired in 2003, commercial flying at speeds above Mach 1 over mainland US was strictly forbidden, largely due to concerns over noise pollution from sonic booms.
Now moves are afoot to lift that restriction with a bill recently introduced in the Senate, and a similar measure in the House of Representatives. That means if the long-awaited 'Son of Concorde' ever gets here, it will have more potential supersonic routes than its predecessor.
Currently, there are several supersonic passenger jets in development that aim to reach speeds beyond Mach 1 without crashing loudly through the sound barrier. NASA's experimental X-59, expected to begin flight testing in 2025, aims to reduce noise to a 'sonic thump.'
And then there's Colorado-based Boom Supersonic, which is developing the Overture, the first actual supersonic passenger plane since Concorde flew into the sunset. Opening up US skies could be a step toward removing some of the hurdles it faces in becoming a reality.
'It's a super exciting year for us,' Blake Scholl, founder and CEO of Boom told CNN.
Much of that excitement comes from the company's XB-1 demonstrator aircraft breaking the sound barrier in January and again in February. It did so without creating a detectable sonic boom by flying at what it calls 'boomless cruise' — also known as 'Mach cutoff' — where sound refracts away from the ground at speeds close to the sound barrier in certain atmospheric conditions.
Boom aims to build the first prototype Overture engine by the end of the year and, if all goes according to the company's very ambitious timeline, American Airlines, Japan Airlines (JAL) and United Airlines could all take delivery of their very first Overtures by the end of the decade.
Scholl's sales pitch is very appealing. Who doesn't want to be able to work a full day on the West Coast, jump on a supersonic flight east that evening, and either be home or in a hotel in New York or D.C. before midnight?
The Overture would make those trips possible with a cruise speed of Mach 1.7 that could slash the duration of a transcontinental flight by up to half.
Overture's 80 passengers could make those speedy flights in relative comfort. Renderings show luxurious seats comparable to the contemporary business class offering on any subsonic plane.
Whether airlines are keen is another matter.
The range of the Overture is one challenge. At about 4,888 miles, it's enough for a transcontinental flight over the US or a transatlantic hop to Europe but not enough to traverse the Pacific without a stop.
And the much-touted commitments from American, JAL and United are all non-binding and, at least in the eyes of the industry, viewed as more fluff than substance. Critically, none of the airlines list the deals among their firm capital commitments in stock exchange filings.
'Boom is working in opposition to the most durable single trend in all of flying since the jet age began,' Jon Ostrower, editor-in-chief of trade publication The Air Current, said on The Air Show podcast in February. 'Airlines, fundamentally, since (the dawn of the jet age) have wanted more efficient aircraft.'
By Boom's own estimates, the Overture would burn two to three times more fuel per premium seat — first or business class — than a subsonic plane, such as the Airbus A350 or Boeing 787, on an intercontinental flight.
Another estimate from the nonprofit International Council on Clean Transportation puts the Overture's fuel burn at five- to- seven-times that of a subsonic long-haul jet.
Airlines would recoup those added fuel costs through higher airfares. Researchers at Worms University of Applied Sciences in Germany described those fares as a 'supersonic premium' in a paper published in the Journal of Air Transport Management last year.
They estimated that airfares on the Overture would need to be roughly 38% higher than the current business class fares on a New York-London flight to turn a profit. Put another way, supersonic flyers would pay roughly $4,830 one-way from New York to London in June based on current average one-way airfares of around $3,500 on Google Flights.
The researchers at Worms were confident that when flying westward travelers would pay a premium for supersonic flights because they 'fly back in time,' as one of the report's authors Jan Belke told CNN. That time gain could translate into real monetary benefits. Eastbound, however, the financial case was weaker due to hours lost across time zones.
While Boom's Scholl acknowledged that Overture seats will likely be priced out of budget for most passengers, he said there's still a solid business case.
'If you hit a mainstream price point — and business class is a mainstream price point — I think of it as the [Tesla] Model S of supersonic flight, it's not yet for everybody but it is a pretty big market segment,' he said.
The question is how many will pay that supersonic premium?
Digital communications have vastly improved from the days of the Concorde. Video calls have reduced the need for in-person meetings, and with flyers now able to answer emails or even join a virtual meeting in mid-air, in-air downtime is rapidly shrinking on subsonic flight.
Richard Aboulafia, a managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory and a long-time skeptic of Boom's business case for the Overture, estimated that Boom needs $12-15 billion to bring the Overture to market, but has only raised around $800 million to date.
Boom had about $700 million, according to its last public funding disclosure in 2023.
Asked how much Boom needs to develop Overture, Scholl put the number at 'under $2 billion.' He cited numerous cost savings the company has found eliminating 'inefficiencies' in the existing aerospace supply chain by, for the most part, integrating production under its own roof.
This integration, Scholl added, also speeds up the development and production process. That gives him confidence in achieving its aggressive timeline of flying the Overture by 2028 and handing the first planes over to airlines a year later. Ostrower called the timeline unrealistic.
Of the many challenges ahead of Boom, one is regulatory approval. The Federal Aviation Administration's certification process has slowed dramatically since the Boeing 737 MAX grounding in 2019 and 2020.
Boom's timeline allows for just a year of flight tests; Airbus took about 18 months to certify the A350 from first flight in June 2013 to the first delivery in December 2014.
Scholl seems unfazed by this, expressing confidence in Boom's ability to meet its targets and produce planes that, in his words, 'delete the friction of travel' by going a whole lot faster than today's jets.
'There's no guarantee of success here — statistically failure is the most likely outcome — but it's definitely possible,' Scholl said. 'The technology is there, the market is there, the passengers and airlines are there, the regulations for overland, I believe, will be there in relative short order. We just have to execute.'