Supersonic Concorde could fly again thanks to quieter low-boom technology Supersonic travel in the cabin of a New York-bound Concorde wasn’t all about crossing the Atlantic in less than three-and-a-half […]

Supersonic travel in the cabin of a New York-bound Concorde wasn’t all about crossing the Atlantic in less than three-and-a-half hours. It was impossibly glamorous, a world of Dom Perignon and Havana cigars – on the maiden flight at least – where the odds of sitting next to Sting or Elizabeth Taylor were thrillingly high.

Now, 14 years since Concorde made its last commercial flight, from New York to London, a new generation of supersonic aircraft is promising faster-than-sound flight again. Whether they will be affordable to those who don’t run a major corporation remains to be seen, but the allure of travelling at the speed of a bullet seems as strong as ever.

In the years since that final Concorde flight, rapid technological progress has transformed our lives – yet commercial air passengers are still flying more slowly than they did when Concorde made its maiden journey in January 1976.

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Earlier this month Bristol was host to the opening of a new aerospace museum, where visitors can peep inside the last Concorde to take to the skies. But just as supersonic flight becomes a museum piece, there are those who say it is about to come back with a bang, though – crucially – perhaps without the boom.

Super silence

Tim Robinson, editor of Aerospace magazine, said we are now seeing the “most serious push since the 1990s” to develop supersonic passenger flight. However, one of the problems that eventually grounded Concorde was the sonic boom – the loud noise, like an explosion, generated by the audio shock waves as the plane flew faster than the speed of sound.

The noise made it untenable for Concorde to fly regularly over populated areas – it was banned by Congress from overland routes in the US in the 1970s – dramatically limiting the aircraft’s potential routes and therefore its profitability.

Enter Nasa, which is not just about the moon and Mars. The famous acronym stands for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and its aeronautical arm has been working to develop a low-boom – or quieter – supersonic aircraft.

A team of engineers at the Armstrong Flight Research Center in California have designed an experimental plane called a Low Boom Flight Demonstrator – more catchily, the X-plane – that they hope to have in the air within four years.

By modifying the design, particularly of the front of the aircraft so that shock waves are more dispersed when they hit the ground, they aim to bring boom volumes down to an acceptable level.

Carbon footprint

Funding for the first year of the prototype build is included in President Donald Trump’s budget for 2018 and if Nasa succeeds in reversing the ban on overland flight “the potential for supersonic flight could increase dramatically,” said Robinson.

Green campaigners are unenthusiastic. Mike Childs of Friends of the Earth said: “Do we think it’s a good thing to enable the super-rich to fly even faster and burn up even more carbon? The answer is categorically no. The super-rich can wait… until scientists have found a way of making these zero-carbon.”

However, some new kids on the block aren’t waiting. Boom, founded by former Amazon executive Blake Scholl, promises speeds faster than Concorde and fares of around $2,500 for a three-and-a-quarter-hour flight between London and New York.

It hopes its prototype, “Baby Boom”, will be airborne before 2019, and to have first passengers on board a full-size version (40 to 50 seats) by 2023. Perhaps inevitably, Sir Richard Branson is involved: Virgin Galactic, his space flight company, has an option to buy 10 of Boom’s aircraft and will provide manufacturing and test flight support.

Mini-cord

Then there is Aerion, which, in partnership with Airbus, plans to build a small supersonic jet for around 12 passengers. The AS2 is pitched as a business jet rather than a scheduled aircraft and could be in the sky in four years, and carrying passengers two years after that.

Aerion’s plane does not aim to match the speeds of Concorde – it is intended to travel at a maximum of around 1.5 times the speed of sound, rather than twice as its forebear did – but would still be able to make the London-New York trip in a little over four hours. Crucially, the AS2 is designed to fly at subsonic speeds over land – something that Concorde could not do efficiently.

That, according to Jock Lowe, Concorde’s longest-serving pilot and a former president of the Royal Aeronautical Society, puts Aerion in pole position.

“The number of passengers who can afford supersonic travel is quite small,” he said. “I think we are highly unlikely to see an aircraft of 50 seats plus – we are looking at five to 15 seats maximum. It will mainly be private jets, business aviation, and I am sceptical about overland supersonic flight, so you need a plane that can do both.”

Robinson also believes the new supersonic breed might take a little longer than the manufacturers’ projections. He pointed out that there are some serious hurdles – including environmental and airport noise regulations, and the sheer logistics of air travel – even before the planes have been successfully designed.

“It is early days yet,” he said, “as to whether they get there.”

Captain Jock

Captain Jock Lowe, former Concorde pilot, British Airways director of flight operations and president of the Royal Aeronautical Society. He is 73 and lives near Marlow.

“Flying Concorde never got boring. Travelling at 22 miles per minute, you couldn’t get behind the game, so it kept you alert. And there was great camaraderie with the crew.

“People have compared it to driving a sports car compared with a bus. That’s what it was like. Wherever we went, people wanted to see it, so it was great to show it off. There were four seats abreast – but no row 13 – and racing car designers designed the seats. It was champagne service – and good champagne too. I remember once flying when the Hale-Bopp comet was in the sky. We were up at 60,000 ft and you could see the comet – the tail of it was about a third of the sky. It was just a wonderful sight.

“Our market was people who were entitled to fly Concorde through their work, or were so rich it didn’t matter. In the early Eighties we surveyed our passengers and they guessed that the ticket price was higher than it was, so we put the price up and it actually helped; the exclusivity was part of the appeal.

“But just as they stopped flying to the moon, so Concorde had to end – and I think with hindsight it stopped at the right time. It was going to cost more and more to keep going, and if it hadn’t stopped in 2003 then it would have stopped a few years later with the financial crash. Better for it to stop then, when you could still think of it in glowing terms.

“While it lasted, it was an aspiration – a dream for a population. It was a national project for the UK. Ask lottery winners what they wanted to do – fly on Concorde. Executives would send their private jets on ahead and fly Concorde. I’ve flown the Queen, Blair, Nixon, Paul McCartney… Who do you want? The Queen said once she had enjoyed it. You don’t quiz the Queen about whether she was excited, but I think she probably was.”