Supersonic travel inevitable, maker of Concorde successor claims
The return of supersonic travel has become 'inevitable' after Donald Trump lifted a 52-year ban on such flights over US soil, according to the company building a successor to Concorde.
Boom Supersonic, which has been developing an updated version of the Anglo-French aircraft for a decade, said the president had provided the final push needed to make the jet a reality.
Blake Scholl, Boom's founder, said the lifting of the ban will open up a wider market for supersonic flights and help the sector reach critical mass and financial viability more quickly.
Flight times between London and an inland US city such as Chicago could now be cut from 7 hours 20 minutes on a subsonic aircraft to just 4 hours 30 minutes on Boom's Overture jet.
Mr Trump signed an executive order lifting the supersonic ban this month after a Boom test flight in January broke the sound barrier without the sonic boom reaching the ground.
Mr Scholl said: 'It's just fantastic. I think at this point it makes the return of supersonic passenger flight inevitable.'
He said he encountered 'a tremendous amount of excitement' on visiting the White House and Congress a day after announcing that so-called 'boomless cruise' had been achieved.
'It's been talked about in theory for a long time,' he said, 'but once a thing goes from theory to practise all of a sudden it gets people's attention.'
A bipartisan bill was introduced in the House of Representatives and Senate, before Mr Trump's intervention rendered the legislative route unnecessary.
Speaking about the move, the president expressed frustration with the pace of modern air travel, saying that the industry had 'gone backward' in the past 30 years.
Describing Concorde as 'one of the most beautiful pieces of art,' he said the sonic boom was never a huge problem and that companies now had it 'pretty well figured out'.
He said: 'The technology changes. So we're making it possible. We have regressed and now we are going to progress.'
During its test flights, Boom ensured that sound waves were refracted away from the Earth by breaking the sound barrier at an altitude and speed dictated by atmospheric conditions.
Mr Scholl said he expects to see supersonic private jets link American cities as Boom's airliners operate transatlantic routes while taking advantage of the rule change when crossing the US.
He said: 'I think other people are going to build this product. It makes the market much larger and the use case much larger.'
Canada retains a supersonic ban so a London-Chicago service would have to ignore the shortest route over Newfoundland and fly at Mach 1.7 to the US east coast and then drop its speed to Mach 1.3 to complete the journey.
Mr Scholl said Mr Trump's landmark decision, under which the speed ban will be replaced with noise-based standards, should not be viewed as controversial.
He said: 'It makes all the sense in the world. If there's no boom, that's not a hard decision.'
He said that the 1973 law – introduced to spite Europe and the Soviet Union, which had pressed on with supersonic projects after the US withdrew – had stifled innovation and was 'the worst own goal in regulatory history'.
Mr Scholl said the supersonic ban could even be blamed for what he called 'the gradual implosion of Boeing' as talented engineers deserted aerospace for the technology sector and companies such as Facebook, Amazon and Google.
He said: 'If you go from the Wright brothers to the introduction of the Boeing 707, every generation of commercial aeroplanes was faster and better.
'But the modern day 787 is really the same product doing the same thing, just more efficient and more refined, but not any better at connecting the planet.'
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