It was the airborne modern marvel of a golden age of travel. When Concorde first took to the skies in 1969, it quickly became a symbol of speed, luxury, and Anglo-French engineering prowess. Celebrities and businessmen, plus the lucky ordinary few who nabbed occasional discounted tickets, enjoyed a white-glove service with gourmet meals and free flowing champagne, while crossing the Atlantic on a needle-like nose in under four hours – half the time of a conventional airliner.
No wonder the world misses supersonic travel. But that may soon all be about to change. Two decades since the final fleet of concordes was retired, entrepreneurs and engineers are in an accelerated race for a new dawn of super speed travel – and the early signs look good.
This week NASA made the final preparations for the maiden flight of its Lockhead Martin X-59 jet, designed to fly at 1.4 times the speed of sound but, crucially, while delivering a quiet “thump” instead of a boom.
The data gathered will inform US and international regulators of new established noise thresholds to help pave the return of faster commercial flights across the world.
Elsewhere, a new crop of tech innovators, itching to help passengers fly not just quicker, but quieter, greener, and (hopefully) more affordably, are making serious moves.
It’s a development that not only Concorde fans are watching with eager anticipation. Since the fleet’s retirement on November 26, 2003, waved off by a crowd of cheering well-wishers at Heathrow Airport, air travel has changed dramatically – but not for the better. Flights these days are a grim chore to be endured, unless you rank among the super-wealthy elite, whether that’s due to the “premium carriers” (naming no names), or the aggressive surcharges of budget brands.
So who is leading the charge on this second wave of supersonic travel? Step forward 44-year-old American tech entrepreneur Blake Scholl.
The founder of the aptly named Boom Supersonic company is aiming to deliver passengers from London to Denver, Colorado, where he lives in just six to seven hours; the time difference will mean they arrive at the same time.
A high school dropout turned computer science graduate from Carnegie Mellon University, Scholl went on to work with Amazon and Groupon as a software engineer. And the father-of-four has a lifelong passion for flying after his parents took him to watch turboprop Cessnas taking flight near their home in Cincinnati, Ohio.
He only wishes his own children had been lucky enough to experience supersonic flights so that they might have seen their grandfather who lived in Hong Kong more, rather than having to endure an 18-hour flight.
“I always wanted to fly on Concorde, but it last flew in 2003 and I couldn’t afford a ticket back then,” he tells the Express. “When I saw Concorde, it was in a museum in Seattle [in 2007].
“It made me sad to think that this amazing aircraft was sitting in a museum, and nothing better was flying people around. I never understood why no one had picked up where Concorde left off, so I decided to find out.”
One factor that hamstrung the first phase of commercial supersonic flight was the 1973 ban on sonic booms over America. This meant Concorde could only ever reach top speed over the Atlantic. The US ban, although mainly due to complaints from booms caused by military aircraft, was due in part to fears that a new wave of supersonic passenger planes would make sitting in the “yard” an ordeal.
It stood until 2025, when Donald Trump, himself an avid flyer already facing controversy over his attempt to secure a new presidential jet from Qatar, tore it up as part of his effort to “to spur innovation and economic growth”.
Much of the rest of the world, including Europe, have their own “boom bans” but innovators including Blake hope that domestic success over the US – as the resurrected Atlantic crossing, plus overseas travel between Los Angeles and Tokyo and Singapore and Australia – will prompt a travel revolution.
Despite its name, ironically the company will ensure its Overture aircraft have only a quiet or even inaudible “boom” due to “Mach cutoff”, which means the sonic waves are refracted in the atmosphere and do not reach ground level.
With 130 orders from major airlines already in hand, the Overture certainly seems to be the most plausible option in the coming years for supersonic fliers. Once greenlit for departure, it will fly at twice the speed of today’s airliners, cruising at Mach 1.7.
Scholl, is evangelical about his company’s mission, previously stating: “There’s no reason we can’t make it work. Look at our record. The analysts said a startup can’t build a supersonic jet. Only governments have ever done that. We built one. Then they said there’s no market for supersonic. But airlines are ordering. Now they say we’ll never be able to build an engine. So far, we’ve proved them wrong on everything.
“The day we broke the sound barrier I stood with the team, and I said: 'The reason we’re here today is because we didn’t give up when reasonable people would have given up'. The way we get Overture done is a whole lot of not giving up. We’re not going to give up.”
So it’s no surprise he’s been dubbed “the Elon Musk of aviation”.
So far, Boom’s test aircraft, the XB-1, has broken the sound barrier six times without creating an audible sonic boom.
Mock-ups of Overture’s cabins also show a return to luxury travel with wood inlays, high-end food and roomy seats, with a firm promise of less flight turbulence since passengers will spend the duration of their time at a dizzying 60,000ft.
What about fares, though? The company is understandably elliptical on this point, telling the Express: “Ultimately, fares are up to our airline partners. We’ve designed Overture to be profitable for airlines at fares similar to first and business class across hundreds of transoceanic routes.”
Some think that billionaires will nab all the seats, and keep the rest of us in the slow lane. But there is no reason not to imagine that as the technology spreads, prices could not come down dramatically.
There are concerns, though. Tech visionaries have developed something of a reputation for overpromising and underdelivering, if delivering at all.
And the Overture will be a little slower than Concorde, while it's suspected that any trans-Pacific flight would require a refuelling stop. “Concorde was a technological marvel of her time and we stand on her shoulders as we progress towards a supersonic future,” a Boom spokesperson tells the Express. “However, Concorde was never built to be economically or environmentally sustainable. Overture’s purpose-built Symphony engine is designed to run on up to 100% sustainable aviation fuel.”
Aviation expert Jonathan Glancey, author of the definitive Concorde: The Rise and Fall of the Supersonic Airliner believes the Boom Overture “could have a profitable niche as a smart and very fast supersonic jet for business executives”.
But, he adds, Concorde “caught the mood of an era” in a way that Boom may struggle to do.
“Concorde was, quite simply, very beautiful, its beauty created through its very speed and the engineering form necessary to make that speed possible and operational,” says the writer of the newly published book V-Force: Britain's Nuclear Bombers and the Cold War.
“Its design is all of a piece. The Boom Overture has engines hanging from the wings and lacks the purity of Concorde’s form.
“Concorde flew a very particular route that drew a powerful, influential, glamorous and regular clientele; it was like a club at 50,000-ft at Mach 2 over the Atlantic. I’m not sure if this can be replicated”.
Indeed, if you dismiss the embarrassingly dangerous Soviet copycat, Concorde ploughed a lonely supersonic furrow during its decades of dominance. That was until the dream hit tragedy.
In July 2000, horror struck, when Air France Flight 4590 crashed into a hotel shortly after takeoff from Paris, killing all 113 people on board and four others on the ground. Debris on the runway had pierced a tyre, with fragments of the wheel causing a fuel tank fire when the aircraft was already travelling too fast to abort takeoff.
The disaster sent shockwaves through the aviation world, raising serious concerns about safety, due to a succession of wheel-related incidents. Though modifications and upgrades followed, Concorde never fully recovered. Maintenance costs, low passenger numbers, and the fear and lack of demand prompted by 9/11 led to its eventual retirement.
Whether Boom can now build nearly 10 times the number of Concordes which ever entered commercial service is highly ambitious, especially after Virgin let its order for 10 of the craft expire in 2023. The plane would consume much more fuel than regular jets (Concorde supposedly used two tons of fuel taxiing) and the company’s suggestion that operators purchase sustainable aviation fuel and carbon credits to keep things net-zero is vague, if not implausible.
And while supersonic flight certainly sounds appealing, could the technology be blown out of the water by hypersonic trips, which would make anywhere in the world accessible in two hours? Flights at 3,800mph and above could see you leave London, make it to Tokyo for a sushi lunch and be in the States for dinner.
Add AI into the mix and the possibilities get even more exciting. The most advanced concept could be Hyperian Aerospace’s Hyperliner, a Mach 10 (7,600mph) powered by hydrogen that could fly from New York to London in under 30 minutes, or from New York to Sydney in an hour and a half.
Sound implausible?
The plans remain on the drawing board… for now.
But whether we’re facing a super – or hypersonic revolution, perhaps one thing is certain – the age of “long haul flights” could soon be consigned to the history books. And, unlike Concorde, judging by today’s swathe of airline complaints, there will be few to mourn its passing.
