United Airlines wants to be the fastest in the skies. The US airline commissioned the startup Boom Supersonic 15 supersonic planes to speed up travel time on some of its flights.
Boom Supersonic stated that Overture, as this aircraft will be called, will be presented in 2025. It will fly for the first time in 2026 and, if it complies with all the regulations, it will begin carrying passengers in 2029.
The aircraft will run 100% on sustainable jet fuels (SAF), and will reach a speed of Mach 1.7, that is, twice the speed of the fastest airliners today.
In addition to the development costs of the device, the manufacturer will have to overcome other obstacles, such as the reluctance to deal with the noise problems of airplanes crossing the sound barrier or receive authorization to fly at about 18 km in height compared to 12 km for a regular airplane .
In the opinion of Jon Ostrower of the trade publication Air Current, this announcement is a turn of the wheel. “The last time United commissioned a supersonic plane, humans had not yet set foot on the moon,” he said on Twitter.
“(United Airlines) is going against the tide of the most constant trend of airlines for 50 years: the desire to fly cheaper, at the same speed,” he added.
So far, neither company has provided details on the financial terms of the deal, but if the project goes through, Overture would be the first supersonic passenger jet since the Concorde’s last flight in 2003, a plane that turned out to be more costly than efficient. .
The Concorde was a supersonic aircraft introduced by British Aircraft Corporation and Sud-Aviation in December 1967, but which obtained permission from its commercial service seven years later.
The aircraft managed to travel at a speed of 2,500 kilometers per hour. And of the 20 that were made, only 14 managed to see the blue of the sky. Its added value, they said, is that it could reach its destinations much earlier. For example, make three and a half hours on a flight from Paris to New York, instead of the almost eight that would be done on a traditional commercial flight.
However, it consumed 25,680 liters of kerosene per hour versus the less than 5,000 liters per hour required by conventional aircraft. Its end in the air was marked by one of the Air France Concordes that crashed in 2000, killing 113 people. After the accident, the supersonic aircraft went out of service and its last commercial flights were in 2003.
With information from AFP.
