SUPERSONIC TRAVEL TO MAKE COMEBACK?
3 US firms in race to speed up commercial travel set sights on the super-rich
SUPERSONIC passenger travel, which died out with the Concorde’s demise in 2003, will make a comeback by the mid-2020s if three entrepreneurial United Statesbased companies can make jets quiet and efficient enough to win over buyers and fliers.
Fifteen years ago, Boeing cancelled plans to build the near-supersonic Sonic Cruiser, the last big attempt by a major manufacturer to speed up commercial travel. Now Japan Airlines and Virgin Group are backing one of the three US supersonic projects, Denver-based Boom Technology, which plans a 55-seat all business class jet.
Lockheed Martin is partnering with Aerion to develop smaller supersonic business jets, with Spike Aerospace also targeting the private jet market, given many see the super-rich as the likeliest early adopters of super- sonic travel.
Concorde was developed in the 1960s, meaning this is hardly new technology. But the programme was government-backed, with only 14 jets ever delivered to then-government owned British Airways and Air France. Other airline orders evaporated as the purchase price soared and they were eventually retired as maintenance costs rose and passenger revenue fell.
New players are relying on venture capital funding models.
To make the project economics stack up, the engines need to be far more fuel efficient and less noisy than those used by Concorde or fighter jets. That has proven tough to engineer, especially at higher speeds like the Concorde’s Mach 2, which halved the travel time from London to New York to 3.5 hours.
Engine manufacturers and jet makers have spent decades improving fuel efficiency, expanding range and reducing noise. But to get up to mach speed, a supersonic jet requires an engine core more like those on the commercial jets of the 1970s and 1980s, which noisily gobble more air and fuel.
Aerion, the most advanced of the proposed supersonic jet projects, is working with GE Aviation to develop an engine based on a core used in F-16 fighters and Boeing 737s that was developed in the 1970s.
In a sign of the challenges involved using an older engine core rather than spending billions to engineer a new one, Aerion has reduced the jet’s planned speed from Mach 1.6 to 1.4.
Today’s top business jets fly at around Mach 0.9, and commercial jets at Mach 0.85.
Jeff Miller, Aerion’s head of marketing, said the speed had fallen to meet noise standards and due to temperature limits involved with adapting an existing engine core.
Aerion, chaired by billionaire businessman Robert Bass, plans for the 12-seat, US$120 million (RM487.32 million) jet to make its first test flight in 2023, with entry into service in 2025.
Boom wants a US$200 million jet capable of Mach 2.2 and Spike aims for a US$100 million jet at Mach 1.6, down from an earlier Mach 1.8.
Both want their jets to enter service in 2023, two years earlier than Aerion. Several industry sources said those timelines appeared unrealistic because the companies had yet to select engines and would face testing and certification challenges.
Boom founder Blake Scholl said the company was examining an adaptation of an existing engine as well as a clean-sheet option, with more to say next year. Spike chief executive Vik Kachoria said his company was in talks with two engine suppliers.
Both are working on smaller demonstrator aircraft with different engines designed to prove the concept is achievable within their proposed timeframes.
Scholl said airlines need a speed of at least Mach 2 to make the supersonic business case stake up because that would shave one day off a trans-Atlantic itinerary and two days off transPacific trips. For now, only overwater itineraries are under consideration due to widespread bans on civilian supersonic flights over land.
“Faster speeds not only are better for passengers, they are better for airlines, who get to turn the plane around and fly more segments in the same day, possibly even with the same crew,” said Scholl.