Supersonic Commercial Aviation May Go Boom

Decades after Concorde, new supersonic commercial airliners look like a reality.

Supersonic travel has been the Holy Grail of commercial aviation since the 1960s. In that decade, Russia, Britain, France and America raced to develop faster than sound airliners, with Concorde emerging as a practical commercial airliner in the 1970s. The Russian Tupolev Tu-144 never delivered efficient operations and the Boeing 2707 program was cancelled before a prototype was built. Concorde never emerged as the money-maker it was intended to be, in no small part due to high oil prices, but a new design from Denver-based Boom Supersonic called Overture promises to deliver dispatch reliability and operating economics that will make supersonic commercial flight practical in today’s economy. In a significant boost to the program, American Airlines is announced their intention to buy 20 airframes, with options for an additional 40.  

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Commercial air travel at supersonic speeds was once thought to be the next big step in air travel. Just as the turbojet engine made nonstop transcontinental and transoceanic flight possible, Mach 2 speeds promised breakfast in New York and lunch in Paris or London.  
 
The race to make such an airplane boiled down to the Russian Tupolev design bureau, a partnership between France’s Aerospatiale and the British Aircraft Corporation, and the large American airframe manufacturers, most notably Boeing. The American companies calculated that the enterprise risk and uncertain economics of the venture made it unwise, and looked to government to backstop the program, to no avail.  
 
But the Russians and the French/British partnership pressed on and in the mid-70s, Concorde became the fastest way to get across the Atlantic. But those poor economics, combined with an unfortunate accident and environmental concerns, meant that Concorde operations stopped in 2003, with only 14 aircraft ever used commercially. The Tupolev Tu-144 was even less successful, carrying passengers for less than a year.  
 
While a brilliant technical success, Concorde was hampered by a number of factors, from high fuel burn and operating costs to flight restrictions due to concerns about sonic boom. It was a technological masterpiece, but technology has advanced considerably in the 50 years since Concorde took flight.  
 
Denver-based Boom Supersonic has created a small airliner capable of Mach 1.7 speeds that the firm plans to fly by 2026. The 200-foot-long aircraft will carry 65 to 80 passengers with a range of over 4,000 nautical miles at a 60,000-foot cruising altitude. The tailed delta design is optimized with a very complex compound curve fuselage and gull wings with four podded turbojet engines, similar to the Convair B-58.  
 
The complex shape offers reduced supersonic drag with good low-speed controllability and significantly, the aircraft can super-cruise, meaning it can fly without the need for afterburners. Concorde could also super-cruise, although it used afterburners for takeoff and acceleration. Supersonic flight without afterburners greatly reduces fuel burn and simplifies maintenance, and the engines will be capable of burning carbon neutral green aviation fuel.  
 
The aircraft will be built in a 400,000 square-foot production facility in North Carolina, with design and development work centred in Denver. Technical partners include Northrop Grumman, Collins Aerospace, Eaton, Rolls-Royce, SAFRAN and the U.S. Air Force.  
 
The technical challenges are well in hand, but the critical make-or-break in airliner development has never been aerodynamics or power plants, but economics. Boeing’s 2707 supersonic airliner project was stillborn because of high development costs and uncertain profitability, and Concorde was never a viable money maker for airlines, although it had value as a prestige “halo” service for Air France and British Airways.  
 
How will Boom Supersonic’s Overture be different? Advanced structures and avionics, manufacturing advantages from composites and advanced light alloys and critically, simplified engines compared to Concorde, without afterburners or complex active inlet systems.  
 
Airlines have shown interest, and significantly, American Airlines has placed a non-refundable deposit on 20 aircraft with an option to purchase an additional 40. Will Boom Supersonic succeed where some of the world’s biggest airframers have failed? One of the advantages of modern engineering development tools such as model-based design, computational fluid dynamics and advanced simulation is that they allow smaller firms to replace complex and expensive physical testing with high reliability virtual models. And those models can be validated to give customers like American Airlines confidence that they can order off the drawing board and get airliners that meet performance specifications.  
 
As a result, by 2029, the world may have commercial flight at twice the speed of current airliners. 

Written by

James Anderton

Jim Anderton is the Director of Content for ENGINEERING.com. Mr. Anderton was formerly editor of Canadian Metalworking Magazine and has contributed to a wide range of print and on-line publications, including Design Engineering, Canadian Plastics, Service Station and Garage Management, Autovision, and the National Post. He also brings prior industry experience in quality and part design for a Tier One automotive supplier.