United Orders Up To 50 Overture Jets From Boom Supersonic In an interesting twist, BOOM Supersonic is now the buzz word in the bid to bring a supersonic passenger jet to market. Aerion previously stole the limelight with their development of the AS2 but since their stunning announcement at the end of May that they ceased operations, BOOM Supersonic has moved to the forefront. JF will tell you why shortly but first let's form some context. Aerion was pushing to develop a family of supersonic jets the first was the AS2, a Mach 1.4 aircraft aimed at the business/executive market. They had some interest and commitments from some big names in the industry, namely Net Jets and Flexjet and their orders combined was worth significantly billions. The issue though is that not all of them were firm orders. The other project Aerion wanted to bring to market down the line was something called the AS3, a near-hypersonic concept, which would have been larger and be more of a commercial jet seating perhaps up to 50 more inline with the light capacity end of the regional jet market. BOOM Supersonic appeared to stand in the shadow of Aerion at least in terms of publicity but they have been working away on actually developing a demonstrator aircraft. Aerion hasn't tangibly produced anything.
This leads to the crux of the article. Since BOOM is marketing their supersonic jet to the commercial industry and with Aerion moved out of the way -for now at least- an interesting development has happened. Commercial airline company United has decided to place a significant order with BOOM for up to 50 of their jets. With the video visualization BOOM just presented on their Youtube page the BOOM jet is looking more like the Concorde and envisioned to operate at 60,000 ft and shave hours off your normal commute between popular international city-pairs. Exciting times are ahead! Lets see if this dream to return to supersonic passenger flight can be materialized with BOOM. For more information: BOOM Supersonic www.boomsupersonic.com ***
