Washington [US], February 5: More than two decades after the last supersonic commercial flight, American aircraft have broken the sound barrier, paving the way for the return of the era of high-speed aviation.
Founded in 2014 with the support of several well-known technology investors such as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, the startup company Boom (headquartered in Denver, Colorado, USA) aims to build and produce the Overture supersonic passenger plane to put into operation as early as 2029, the Financial Times reported on February 3.
Historic Flight
To achieve that goal, the company developed and tested the XB-1, the predecessor to Overture. Since its first flight in March 2024, the XB-1 has completed 12 test flights, including a historic flight on January 28 from the Mojave Air and Spaceport in California.
According to Axios , 12 minutes after the plane took off at an altitude of 10,668 m above the Mojave Desert, pilot Tristan "Geppetto" Brandenburg, head of Boom's test crew, increased the plane's speed to Mach 1,122, or 10% faster than the speed of sound of 1,235 km/h. With this latest achievement, the XB-1 made history as the first supersonic civilian aircraft built in the US and also the first privately developed aircraft to achieve supersonic speed in the world .
The XB-1 prototype is only one-third the size of the actual Overture. Boom is currently working with Kratos Defense & Security Solutions (the company that helped design the turbines for the F-22 and F-35 stealth fighters) to build a custom engine for Overture. Boom's aircraft is expected to be able to reach Mach 1.7, which is twice the speed of the fastest civilian aircraft currently produced by Airbus or Boeing.
Promising return of supersonic commercial aviation
About 22 years ago, the era of supersonic commercial aviation suddenly ended with the retirement in 2003 of the Concorde, a joint British-French aircraft, according to CNN. As the only supersonic civilian aircraft ever operated, Concorde reached a maximum speed of Mach 2.02, or twice the speed of sound, and carried 92 to 120 passengers. However, the Concorde's era ended after a tragic plane crash that killed 113 people in France on July 25, 2000.
By comparison, the Overture is designed to carry 64 to 80 passengers, making it smaller than a typical commercial airliner and costing around $200 million each. Boom's aircraft is built with new materials like carbon fiber and is more fuel efficient than Concorde. The engines can also run on sustainable aviation fuel, which reduces emissions.
In addition, the Mach 1.7 speed allows the aircraft to complete the journey from London (UK) to Miami (Florida, USA) in less than 5 hours, and the flight from Los Angeles (California, USA) to Honolulu (Hawaii, USA) is shortened to 3 hours. The Overture aircraft is expected to be deployed for more than 600 journeys around the world.
To date, Boom has received orders for about 130 aircraft from airlines such as United Airlines, American Airlines, Japan Airlines. It is estimated that the market size of Overture could be up to more than 1,000 aircraft.
Source: Thanh Nien Newspaper