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#SPACE PIONEER SUPER SONIC PLUS#

PRICE MATCHINGĪnother difference with Aerion is that Scholl insists he can make M1.0-plus travel “accessible to anyone who flies”. If we double the speed of flight, we can take days off,” he says. “If the flight is 10-20% faster, it doesn’t really change things. He likens the Overture’s potential to transform travel patterns to the transition from propeller aircraft to jets in the 1960s, when the likes of Hawaii became a tourist destination for millions of mainland North Americans.

Likewise, even on a relatively short flight, such as Hong Kong to Tokyo, a passenger could fulfil a business commitment in a day. The Overture’s main benefit is that it will be a “jetlag killer” on long-haul flights, asserts Scholl, who cites the example of an executive travelling from San Francisco to Tokyo (a key United route), who would “save a whole day” on a round trip. The roar created when it flew over populated areas was one of the reasons the Aerospatiale/BAC Concorde remained banned in many jurisdictions, effectively preventing it establishing a market beyond the North Atlantic. The 4,250nm (8.000km)-range, 64- to 80-seater will travel at M1.7 over water, but at subsonic speeds over land, avoiding a sonic boom. “There are hundreds of city pairs that have routing that is sufficiently over water,” says Scholl. Most Overture services, by contrast, will cater for the long-distance business traveller and spend the bulk of their time over oceans, where the noise is less of an issue. This is because, he says, 80% of private flights are short-haul and over land, where the sonic boom is a problem. However, he insists that its business model was very different to Boom’s, and that its decision to focus on the ultra-high-net-worth market was a “step in the wrong direction”.Īerion folded in 2021, after failing to secure financial backing to advance its AS2 Scholl, who founded Boom eight years ago, says he was “sad it didn’t work out for Aerion, as we all want to see more companies developing great ideas”. However, like so many start-ups, it simply ran out of cash and could not secure fresh investment. It had also secured a marquee customer, fractional ownership operator NetJets. Like Boom – which is building its new factory in Greensboro, North Carolina – Aerion had begun work on a site for its global headquarters, in its case the growing aviation industrial hub of Melbourne, Florida. The US firm had been developing its pencil-shaped AS2 business jet for 15 years and had big name programme partners on board, including Boeing, Collins and GE Aviation. The sudden May 2021 collapse of fellow supersonic aircraft developer Aerion extinguished some of the thrilling promise of a new supersonic era. Japan Airlines was the first to commit to the Overture back in 2017, investing $10 million in a “pre-order” arrangement for 20 aircraft.

#SPACE PIONEER SUPER SONIC PLUS#

It also confirmed Collins, Eaton and Safran as its latest programme partners.īoom signed in 2021 a “purchase agreement” with United Airlines for 15 Overtures, with 35 additional options, and followed that up on 16 August this year with an order from United’s rival American Airlines for 20 examples, plus 40 options, backed by undisclosed “non-refundable deposits”. The Colorado-based business had a major presence at Farnborough, with a high-profile reveal of the new model. If it were down to confidence and industry endorsements alone, there would be no doubt about Boom’s ambitions to become the first privately-funded airliner developer for decades.

Boom founder and chief executive Blake Scholl claims the version will offer “paradigm-changing capabilities” to military operations.

Decade of Airline Excellence Awards 2020īoom has revised the design of its Overture, which now uses four enginesīoom is also eyeing an additional market for the Overture, announcing at Farnborough a partnership with Northrop Grumman to develop a special mission variant for surveillance or transport duties, targeted at the USA and its allies.

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