Supersonic Comeback

Lessons learned from Concorde are making faster-than-sound more workable this time around

- Jenni Reid And Mark Caswell

In January, Boom Supersonic announced it closed its latest funding, a $100 million Series B investment round, bringing total funding to over $141 million. The move brings the company one step closer to its aim of producing “the world’s first economically viable supersonic airliner.” Supersonic is defined as greater than Mach 1, the speed of sound. Hypersonic is generally used to describe speeds exceeding Mach 5.

Of course, the key words here are not “supersonic” or “hypersonic,” but rather “economically viable.” Strictly speaking, technology is not the stumbling block to fasterthan-sound travel, and hasn’t been since 1947, when aviation pioneer Chuck Yeager became the first person to push through the sound barrier. Ever since then, the commercial aviation industry has been in a race to take passengers past Mach 1.

The dream was realized – at least for a while – when, in January 1976, the Concorde flew the first supersonic passenger service between New York and London. The result of a 15-year collaboration between the British and French aeronautics industries, the sleek four-engine delta wing aircraftcovered the route at more than twice the speed of sound.

Concorde brought a new dimension of glamour and speed to aviation. But the supersonic age was to last less than three short decades. By 2003, as high fuel costs and the operational limitations imposed by the aircraft’s telltale trail of sonic booms ate into the Concorde’s utility, Air France and British Airways – the only two carriers regularly operating supersonic flights commercially – pulled the plug.