Boom Supersonic will unfortunately not be supersonic in 2024. A few hours before New Year's Day, the American company has not filed a flight plan to carry out the one that should have concluded 2024 - a test flight at a speed greater than that of sound, from its XB-1 prototype.
Last September, the plane equipped with three engines, which prefigures an airliner capable of carrying 55 passengers, carried out a second test flight five months after its first test. Its engineers gave themselves 90 days and ten more flights to reach the culmination of this development phase, and October and November were busy months.
Nevertheless, after a tenth test flight on December 19, Boom Supersonic has not announced a supersonic flight, which it will certainly postpone until the first days of 2025. On its last flight, XB-1 still reached a speed of 0.95 Mach, thus coming very close to Mach 1, the speed of sound. The flight lasted 46 minutes in total at a record altitude for the company: 32,417 feet.
At 0.95 Mach, Boom Supersonic's test aircraft has already exceeded limits that few airliners can exceed. This is also the whole idea of the company, which intends to offer airlines, in 2030, an aircraft called Overture that will halve flight time to long-distance destinations. American Airlines, Japan Airlines and United Airlines have already shown interest.
21 years after the Concorde, Boom Supersonic has not yet achieved the feat in 2024, but should do so as early as January 2025. The American Federal Aviation Administration has already given it the green light (with an authorization also covering the month of December 2024), but it will be necessary to wait until at least 2026 for the startup based in Denver, Colorado, to move on to a prototype of its final aircraft, Overture, with a real cabin to accommodate 55 passengers, and the capacity to fly at altitudes above 60,000 feet.
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