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On October 24, 2003, onlookers waved as Concorde’s final passenger flight departed John F. Kennedy International Airport for London.
Photo: Mario Tama / Getty Images
Air travel is about to go to hell fast – at least according to the headlines. “American Airlines is about to buy supersonic jets as it clamors for ultrafast travel,” Washington said. Paste Wednesday morning. “World’s Fastest Airline ‘Overture’ Will Usher in a New Era of Supersonic Travel” New York Paste He announced. It followed American Airlines’ announcement that it had ordered 20 supersonic Overture jets from a startup called Boom. The planes carry up to 80 passengers at Mach 1.7. Better yet, they burn a special fuel that makes them carbon neutral.
Everything is very interesting, if it happens. But there’s plenty of reason to believe no – not least because similar claims have been consistently coming up empty for years. “It’s just PR,” says aviation analyst Brian Foley. Supersonic airlift is “still a long way off,” he said, adding, “It’s fun to dream about.”
To hear Boom tell it, the project is moving at a fast pace, and later this year the company says it will break ground on a factory in North Carolina. “We’ll start production in 2024, with the first Overtures rolling off the line in 2025,” says Boom President Kathy Savitt. Flight testing and certification will follow in short order. “We anticipate that the first passengers will be able to fly the Overture in late 2029,” she said.
Boom has made similar grand claims in the past. In the year In 2016, the company said it would operate three-hour transatlantic flights by 2023. “It’s always ten years in the future,” Foley said.
The reality is that developing any new airframe is a very expensive and lengthy process, so even aviation heavyweights approach it with trepidation. The A350 took Airbus ten years and $15 billion to take from the drawing board to the airport. Add in the technical challenges of supersonic flight and you’re climbing a high mountain. Industry analyst Richard Aboulafia estimates that a project like Boom could cost $20 billion to develop.
Peter Garrison, an aircraft designer and longtime industry observer, said those setbacks put him in the skeptic camp, “knowing how difficult it is to get a project like this off the ground.” As with all such massive projects, critical milestones keep getting pushed back and costs escalate.
A big part of the problem is developing the engine. Flying supersonic is technically challenging and requires a particularly strong and durable powerplant. No other supersonic commercial aircraft has an off-the-shelf engine boom that can be easily mounted under the wing. “For us it will be a particularly refined engine,” Savitt admitted.
Rolls-Royce, which is in talks with Boom, told aerospace publication Air Current earlier this year that it would not pocket the development costs. “If Boeing or Airbus comes out with a new product, the engine and avionics suppliers will pay the lion’s share by keeping the revenue below the growth,” says Foley. “But this is a great program.”
Even if Boom can build and validate the Overture, its customers still need to be able to operate the jet profitably. Considering the high fuel and maintenance costs of such jets, seats will necessarily be high-ticket items. A Concorde seat sold for about $20,000 in today’s dollars. Even if Savitt is correct in estimating that Overture can operate at a profit of 75 percent or less at that rate, that’s still a lot of money for a lower rate, since the plane is only allowed to fly supersonic over oceans. The sonic boom will annoy anyone on the ground.
Finally, there is the claim that Overture will be carbon neutral. Boom said the plane will run on “sustainable aviation fuel,” or SAF, which includes biofuels and synthetic hydrocarbons captured from the atmosphere. But the simple fact is that after a manufacturer sells an airplane to an airline, there is no telling what kind of fuel it burns. SAF, says Foley, “is not abundant, not available everywhere, and very expensive.” Given that the airlines know all the costs, this will be a real decision for them. “
The daunting challenges of building a supersonic transport have already failed another startup trying to do the same thing. Last year, Aeron Supersonic, a Boeing-backed company, closed its doors after running out of money. Another Spike Aerospace halted the effort.
Garrison, for his part, said his frustration with past failures in these projects was frustrated by the fact that even if they did work in the end, they wouldn’t benefit people like him in any way. “It’s just to make some rich people happier,” he said.
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