Boom Supersonic Nears Supersonic Flight Milestone

Aerospace startup Boom Supersonic is on a mission to resurrect faster-than-the-speed-of-sound commercial air travel by the end of the decade, with its Overture supersonic airliner.

Boom has built a 1/3 scale prototype of Overture called XB1, and has completed two successful test flights of the demonstrator craft at its flight test facility in California's Mojave desert. They are aiming to make their first supersonic flight of XB-1 by the end of the year.

The company's XB-1 demonstrator aircraft completed its second successful test flight.

Boom says the Overture, which is still in development, will be able to fly approximately 65 passengers from New York to London in 3.5 hours, Newark to Frankfurt in four hours and San Francisco to Tokyo in six hours.

"The really exciting thing here is supersonic flights coming back. It's coming back in a far more mainstream way than we ever had with Concorde," said Boom Supersonic CEO Blake Scholl, as he oversaw preparations for XB-1's second test flight at an airstrip at the Mojave Air & Space Port.

The last Concorde was flown by British Airways and Air France in the 1970s.

"United Airlines, American Airlines and Japan Airlines have all done orders or preorders for the Overture airliner. This is the first new supersonic airliner since Concorde, and it's gonna be affordable at fares 75 percent lower than what you had to pay to fly on Concorde.

It's an all business class experience. So, this is a really nice, comfortable seat on a flight that would let you leave New York in the morning, make an afternoon meeting in London and be home that same day and time to tuck your kids into bed. That's the kind of thing that Overture makes available," said Scholl, who expects Overture to make its first commercial flight within five years.

Overture will use the world’s first automated noise reduction system, flying without afterburners to reduce noise for both passengers and airport communities.