Startup aims to revive supersonic flights

This company hopes to resurrect supersonic commercial air travel.

BLAKE SCHOLL, BOOM SUPERSONIC CEO AND FOUNDER: "Overture will take sixty-five passengers across oceans at twice the speed of any airliner flying today."

Faster-than-the-speed-of-sound travel has not been seen since the SST Concorde was flown by British Airways and Air France in the 1970s.

Boom Supersonic wants to change that.

SCHOLL: "Well, we have to remember that Concorde was designed 60 years ago with slide rules and drafting paper and wind tunnels and converted military engines and now we have literally a half century of progress in basic aerospace technologies.”

The Boom Overture is expected to fly passengers from New York to London in just over three-and-a-half hours, Newark to Frankfurt in four, and eventually, San Francisco to Tokyo in just six.

Boom is building a 1/3 scale prototype of the aircraft and hopes to begin test flights in 2022.

BILL SHOEMAKER, BOOM SUPERSONIC CHIEF TEST PILOT: "From the airplane standpoint, in the lead into first flight, we're going to try and put the airplane through its paces as much as we can on the ground. We want to put the airplane through a set of conditions that are as representative of a flight as we possibly can. So by doing that, we're left with as few surprises as we can possibly have in flight.”

The company also plans to break ground for an Overture factory in 2022, with planes rolling off the assembly line in 2025, followed by the first passenger flights in 2029.

Scholl said the plane will run on 100% sustainable aviation fuel, built from carbon that has been removed from the atmosphere.

United Airlines has a provisional agreement with Boom Supersonic to acquire 15 of its as-yet undeveloped aircraft, with an option to acquire 35 more.

SCHOLL: "You know our ultimate goal is high speed flight for everybody. To make the fastest flight also the most affordable.”