American Airlines ordered 20 supersonic jets that can travel from New York to London in 3 hours

26/08/2022
Science

American Airlines has announced a deal with Boom Supersonic to purchase 20 of its Overture supersonic planes, which are still under construction.

United Airlines said in 2021 that it planned to purchase 15 of the Overture jets. The US military recently also gave Boom Supersonic a $60 million grant to develop the plane. Thanks to sustainable fuel sources, Overture would be “100 per cent carbon-neutral when it’s complete” if Boom Supersonic is to be believed.

Boom Supersonic has been promising to bring back supersonic passenger flights for some time. This project was challenging to carry out since the Concorde retired two decades ago. The latter had high maintenance costs and the bad publicity from a fiery crash that killed over 100 passengers and crew on a flight back in 2000.

The Concorde could beat the distance across the Atlantic Ocean in half the time needed for traditional planes. The price for a seat amounted to around $10,000.

Overture is currently in the engineering prototype phase. With a range of almost 5,000 miles and a top speed of Mach 1.7 (around 1,300 miles per hour), it could fly routes like Miami to London in under five hours and Los Angeles to Honolulu in three hours, as Extreme Tech reports.