Boom Supersonic to take off by mid-2020s

Blake Scholl, founder and CEO of Boom Technology at the Dubai Airshow 2017. - KT photo by Leslie PableoSarwat Story

When a supersonic jet is flying over your home, you'd expect the house to shake and the windows to crack. However, one firm is claiming their jet, that can take passengers from Dubai to London in four and a half hours, will be "as quiet as a regular aircraft".
The founder of Boom, Blake Scholl, was announcing a project update of the aircraft, called Boom, at the second day of the Dubai Airshow.
The Boom Supersonic will be able to transport passengers from Dubai to London in only four-and-a-half hours. Scholl said that the pilot test of the plane, the XB-1, will be carried out next year and the regular flights will come into service by mid 2020s.
The supersonic plane will be 2.6 times faster than a regular aircraft and will be able to carry 55 passengers, with each seat costing the customer the same as a current business-class airplane ticket.
"They're not going to notice the difference because it's no louder than the airplanes that are flying today. At the airport, your approach to land and take-off speeds are a little bit faster than subsonic, which actually reduces the noise footprint because the airplane flies over you faster than it would have otherwise," Scholl told Khaleej Times.
"The Concorde had an afterburner and was literally the loudest aircraft ever made. And Boom aircraft doesn't need an afterburner, it can use a turbo fan. And that means it is quiet enough to land at Heathrow at night. This aircraft will be as quiet as the ones flying around the airports today.
"On the sonic boom side, there's a lot of rumours built around them, that they can break windows, but it turns out it's really hard to break a window with a sonic boom - you have to fly over 100 metre over the window to crack the window. The Boom that we are producing will be significantly quieter than Concorde."
The firm is currently in the stage of its site selection process for the production of its Mach-2.2 airliner. The base of its manufacturing will be in the US, to keep it close to the engineers. The other site selections could be anywhere in the world.
They have hired JLL as the firm that will research for potential sites for them.
"We're open to any place globally for a second manufacturing place. There are a lot of places that are attractive but one of the things we love about the UAE is that it has very forward thinking airlines and it has visionaries in the transport sector, so it would be a great place to be," he said.
Scholl said that passengers will have to pay about the same as they do for a business-class ticket today to fly in Boom.
"Think about for a moment the families that are separated because of the long flights. Think about the trips not taken because when you add up the lost hours, the trip just doesn't feel worth it.
That's where we come in. We are a team of engineers and technologists, brought together for the sole purpose of making our world dramatically more accessible," he said.
"You won't have to be on the Forbes' list to be able to fly, it will cost about the same as flying business class today. The ultimate goal is to make supersonic affordable for anyone who flies."
sarwat@khaleejtimes.com