Technological disruption has upended banking, communication, even space travel (think SpaceX’s reusable rockets), but somehow, commercial aviation has remained largely unchanged.

For decades, Boeing and Airbus have dominated aircraft manufacturing. But that could change if a new entrant, exploiting new technology, can build a faster, cheaper plane and effectively reprice the industry’s costs.

One company leading this charge is Boom Supersonic. At the end of January, Colorado-based Boom successfully flew its test plane, the XB-1, at the speed of Mach 1.1 (or 1.1 times the speed of sound).

This marked the first time a jet developed independently of major aircraft manufacturers has achieved supersonic speeds.

Blake Scholl, chief executive of Boom Supersonic, said the XB-1 was built with a “tiny budget and just 50 people, including engineers, technicians, pilots”.

Data from the test flight is being used to inform the design of a bigger jet, one that Boom hopes will develop a new market: the Overture.

Boom’s Overture will carry between 64 and 80 passengers at speeds about double that of Boeing 787s or Airbus 350s (up to Mach 1.7). The engines are designed to run on 100 per cent sustainable aviation fuel.

Building Overture would be one feat. Successfully commercialising at would be another, but the excitement around the plane is genuine. Scholl says interest in Boom is “just absolutely overwhelming”.

Part of the drive by Boom is to challenge the status quo in aviation. Boeing is beset by problems with its 737 Max, labour and safety issues, and production slowdowns. Airbus has gained market share, but it is also slowed by lingering production disruptions created by the pandemic aftermath.

“This is an industry where there are only two players in the world, Boeing and Airbus, and neither of them has launched a new product in more than 20 years,” says Scholl.

The stasis has bled into the experience of flying, Scholl says. “We’ve taken flying, which is an experience that used to be inspiring, and turned it to something that most people dread.”

A future of sleek airliners transporting passengers at supersonic speeds and reasonable prices over land would help restore some of the thrill of flying.

Scholl says he was inspired by seeing the Concorde in a museum when he was in his 20s. “I wondered why the most amazing airliner ever made was in a museum, not in our skies.”

The last and only commercial supersonic jet, the Concorde, travelled at cruising speed of 2160km/h or Mach 2, up to 60,000 times across the Atlantic, linking London and Paris to New York.

Before the era of Facebook and Apple, the Concorde was a symbol of technology’s possibility. The British-French Concorde capped a century in which humans progressed from the first flight of the Wright Brothers to landing on the Moon in a span of 66 years. The Concorde’s first test flight took place in 1969 – the same year of the Apollo moon landing.

But it was built with the technology of its time. The Concorde was loud, used lots of fuel and had cramped seating (its seats were smaller than many economy seats today). As it exceeded the speed of sound in flight, the pressure of the air created sonic booms – loud explosions that rattled the ground, frightening people.

This limited the Concorde’s routes to flying over the Atlantic.

The Overture promises to get around the prospect of sonic booms by using something called Mach cut-off physics, which involves the plane flying high enough and in the right conditions to a point where sonic boom never reaches the ground.

If Boom planes flying at or near Mach speed over land become viable, they will open up coast-to-coast routes in North America or between the US east coast and deeper into Europe – and across the Pacific.

“It’d be great if Sydney to LA were eight and a half hours, not 15,” Scholl says.

Boom is also building its own engine to efficiently burn sustainable aviation fuel. There is some debate about how easy this is.

Richard Aboulafia, managing director of Washington DC-based AeroDynamic Advisory, says Boom lacks a realistic path towards an engine.

“The real challenge with creating a modern supersonic jetliner is the engine – far more than the airframe,” he says, with only three companies in the world qualified to do “such a complicated and expensive engine”: GE, Pratt & Whitney and Rolls-Royce, none of which are partnering with Boom.

“Boom is doing its own engine ... in conjunction with three minor partners who really don’t have anything like the capabilities needed,” said Aboulafia.

Scholl says such an assessment is rooted in legacy aerospace costs. “There’s a myth today that jet engines are basically impossible to develop and only big companies can do them.”

“That was also a myth about supersonic jets before XB. We’ve proven we can build a supersonic jet. The next thing is we’ll prove we can build a jet engine.”

Brian Potter of the US-based Institute for Progress writes that “the boundary of technological possibility” is defined not just by mastery of the universe but the “limits of the economy and the organisations that operate within it”.

One of those boundaries may be the cost of its creation. Potter says it’s not uncommon for aircraft companies to spend more than their value to complete a plane. Based on past – even recent examples – creating the Overture could require $US15 billion ($23.5 billion) for completion.

Scholl says the $US15 billion price tag would be right “if one of the big old players did it”.

Scholl says Boom has “demonstrated an ability to develop 10 times more efficiently than the traditional players”. So we are expecting costs more in the $US1-2 billion range “versus the much higher costs that would be realised at traditional players”.

Boom has so far amassed funding just shy of $US1 billion, some of it backed by the Saudi-based NEOM Investment Fund.

Boom also uses AI and proprietary software engineering tools, Scholl says, which “speed development while reducing costs”.

However, for Boom’s Overture to succeed, market economics must support it where they didn’t for the Concorde, which only flew a niche market of London, New York and Paris.

With a cheaper operational cost, Scholl forecasts flights on the Overture would fetch as much as business flights today – in the $US2500 to $US5000 range one-way – and, unlike with Concorde, prices would fall with time. The premium travel segment is expanding. More passengers are willing to pay for a higher level of service.

But economics probably weren’t the only reason for a plane’s success. Catching the right moment in the market matters too.

The Concorde was brought to completion in part for the same reasons the moon landing happened – the plane said something about societies that built it.

The Concorde wasn’t even the only supersonic airliner then; Soviet Russia also successfully built a short-lived supersonic transport called the Tu‑144.

Today, China is reportedly developing the C949, a supersonic commercial liner, that will also avoid creating sonic booms and put the Pacific in closer reach of Beijing.

Perhaps supersonic commercial flight will become more attractive both logistically and strategically now than in the past half-century. Boom is also planning a military version of the Overture. Still, the Overture is unlikely to succeed unless it can make a commercial use case.

To date, Boom has orders or options for orders from United Airlines, American Airlines and Japan Airlines. However, aircraft purchasing is a long and complicated business, with sizeable differences between initial options and final delivery.

For example, in the 1960s, Qantas placed deposits to buy four Concordes and six of Boeing’s planned supersonic commercial jet, the 2707.

Overture is scheduled to be released by the end of the decade – an ambitious timeline.

Scholl says: “I’m a believer that small, talented teams will do things that the big legacy players can’t do or won’t do.”

Aboulafia says that the people behind Boom aren’t really “aerospace people”.

“They’re Silicon Valley. Thus, there’s lots of hubris.”

Scholl is both unbowed and optimistic. “We have an opportunity here to build a company that’s not just larger than Boeing, but one of the most significant companies, one of the most valuable companies on the planet.”

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