Boom Supersonic Overture jet aims to fly anywhere in four hours

The CEO of a supersonic jet company that plans to fly us anywhere in just four hours says the big difference between his aim and the Concorde will be the rock-bottom price.

Boom Supersonic founder Blake Scholl spoke to CNN months after his start-up company debuted a real-life prototype supersonic aircraft, the XB1, which it plans to fly towards the end of the year.

It will then focus on Overture, a commercial jet that will reach speeds of Mach-2.2 — more than twice the speed of today’s subsonic commercial jets — which it hopes to get flying by 2026.

The jet will be designed to seat up to 88 people and will focus on more than 500 routes, primarily transoceanic routes.

Boom Supersonic aims to fly a supersonic commercial jet that will eventually fly anywhere in the world in four hours, for around $120. Picture: Boom SupersonicSource:Supplied

The company says Overture will initially be able to fly from New York to London in three hours and 15 minutes, while it would take only eight hours and 30 minutes to fly between Sydney and Los Angeles. But it hopes to shave that time down even more.

Only two supersonic jets have flown commercially in history, including the now-defunct Concorde, the French-British airliner that operated from 1969 to 2003.

But it was a costly proposition for travellers — by the 1990s, the Concorde was charging a whopping $15,000 for a return trip — equivalent to $25,000 today.

“That’s not travel, that’s like a thing you might hope to do once in a lifetime,” Mr Scholl told CNN.

Overture’s Mach-2.2 speed would be twice the speed of regular commercial jets. Picture: Boom SupersonicSource:Supplied

“Versus where we want to get, which is anywhere in the world in four hours for 100 bucks.”

But prices won’t be that low right away — maybe in two or three generations’ time.

“It’s going to take us time to get there,” Mr Scholl said.

“Lots of people think like one or two steps ahead.

“I find it helpful to think much further out and say, ‘where do we want to be in a decade or two? And what’s possible at that timescale?’ Then you work backwards and say, ‘how do we get there?’.

He said breaking the sound barrier would be life-changing: “It changes where we can vacation, changes where we can do business, changes you can fall in love with or you can be close to.”

While he saw Boom Supersonic “picking up where Concorde left off”, Mr Scholl said his company had a focus on environmental sustainability, and aimed to create a “carbon-neutral” plane that used alternative fuels that used the same amount of carbon it emitted during flight.

“What you’re basically doing is sucking carbon out of the atmosphere, liquefying it into the jet fuel, then you put that in the aeroplane,” Mr Scholl said.

“So when it goes out the back of the aeroplane. You’re just moving carbon around in a circle.”

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