Source::APN
AP/RSS
United Airlines aims to bring back supersonic travel before the decade is over with a plane that is currently just an artist’s drawing — even the prototype hasn’t flown yet. The airline said Thursday that it plans to buy 15 jets from Boom Supersonic with an option for 35 more once the start-up company designs a plane that flies faster than the speed of sound while meeting safety and environmental standards.
United hopes to carry passengers on the plane in 2029. The airline said the plane will reduce flights between London and the New York area to just 3 1/2 hours and make Tokyo only six hours from San Francisco. United declined to discuss financial terms, but Boom CEO Blake Scholl said the deal was worth $3 billion, or $200 million per plane with none of the discounting that is typical in the aircraft business.
It has been nearly two decades since the last flight of the supersonic Concorde, which British Airways and Air France began using in 1976 to zip passengers in luxury across the Atlantic. The last one was retired in 2003, three years after an Air France Concorde crashed into a hotel shortly after takeoff from Paris, killing everyone on board and four people on the ground.
Several companies are working to come up with new supersonic jets that would be more economical on fuel — and create fewer climate-changing emissions — than the Concorde. Boom is working to develop an 88-seat plane it calls Overture, which it says will be the first supersonic airliner to fly on so-called sustainable fuel. Scholl said that a one-third sized prototype will make its first test flight later this year or early in 2022.
ALSO READ
