Imagine flying from New York to London in less than four hours. It sounds unbelievable, but it used to happen thanks to a supersonic plane called the Concorde.
High operating costs, low ticket sales and a deadly crash grounded the plane more than 20 years ago. Since then, the return of supersonic air travel has been pretty slow.
Until now.
The Colorado-based company Boom Supersonic wants to return commercial flights back to supersonic speeds. Its XB-1 demonstrator aircraft made huge progress on January 28, reaching Mach 1.122 (750 miles per hour) during a test flight over the Mojave Air and Space Port in California. The plane made 10 previous test flights in 2024 and one on January 10, 2025, hitting Mach 0.95.
The company says the XB-1 is the precursor to the development of its commercial airliner, Overture, which will be built in a “superfactory” that was completed in Greensboro in 2024. The factory is designed to build 66 Overture planes per year.
The Concorde was developed by Sud Aviation (later Aérospatiale) and British Aircraft Corporation. Work on the project began in 1962, but the first commercial flight didn’t take off until 1976. Only 20 planes were built.
The Concorde developed a passionate following after its debut but few passengers.
Citing rising operating costs and low-ticket sales, British Airways retired its Concorde fleet. Its last commercial flight was October 24, 2003, when British Airways Flight 002 flew from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport to London’s Heathrow Airport. It carried about 100 passengers, and a round-trip ticket cost about $9,000.
While there has been a lot of talk about getting back into supersonic air travel, so far no one has succeeded.
But Boom Supersonic is getting close.
Boom Supersonic says its Overture aircraft will seat 64–80 people and should be ready for airliner operations in a few years. It already has about 130 preorders from American Airlines, United Airlines and Japan Airlines.
The plane will fly at Mach 1.7, about twice the speed of today’s fastest passenger jets. It’s made of carbon fiber composite materials, which are strong and lightweight. Conventional jet engines powered by sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) will provide the power.
“The advent of digital engineering is a huge enabler for why supersonic flight’s coming back,” Boom Supersonic’s CEO, Blake Scholl, told CNN in March 2024. “Aerodynamics, materials, propulsion: Those are the big three areas where we’ve made huge progress versus Concorde.”
Scholl hopes Overture will be able to operate on hundreds of routes worldwide, adding, “I very much believe in the return of supersonic air travel, and ultimately to bring it to every passenger on every route.”