Talk to a harried air traveler about the basics of modern flight, and they'll probably be surprised when they learn commercial airplanes fly only as fast as they did in the 1950s. Given the range of aerospace advances in the past half-century, plus the technological leaps in almost every other area of human endeavor, it seems reasonable to ask: Why can't we fly faster?
That's the question driving a startup called Boom Technology, which says it's time to bring supersonic jet travel into the mainstream -- in a modern way. The company is pursuing speed with an audacious idea: a 45-seat aircraft that cruises at Mach 2.2, or 1,451 miles per hour, faster than the defunct Concorde and certainly faster than the standard 550 mph, with fares no more expensive than a current business-class round trip, which ranges between $5,000 and $10,000.
But long before travelers can marvel at a quick hop across the Atlantic, Boom will need to sell the airlines not just on a technically disruptive aircraft, but also on one that can accomplish such feats of velocity cost-effectively. It must earn a solid profit -- no middling returns allowed -- and this, of course, has been a key reason the Concorde was an aberration rather than the harbinger of universal supersonic travel.
Boom is likely to encounter deep skepticism in a conservative industry that still relies heavily on a fundamental airplane design devised 70 years ago. The major global airlines Boom will court operate with two cardinal maxims: it's really hard to make money with small airplanes, and it's really, really hard to make money with supersonic airplanes, which are renowned for their fuel inefficiency.
"I have no problem seeing the demand for this airplane," said Marty St. George, a JetBlue Airways Corp. executive and industry veteran. "The issue is, can you do it and make the numbers work?"
Boom will face a numerical gauntlet as it seeks to convince airlines of the advantages of small, supersonic craft, with airlines posing tough questions about weight, range, fuel burn, maintenance, dispatch reliability and dozens of other issues. The company also plans for its aircraft to fly on three engines, a departure from the industry trend of using two engines as the most efficient configuration.
In response to skeptics, Boom touts its design as a radical update of the troubled Concorde, which was operated by only two airlines over 27 years. Airlines no longer abide such loud, kerosene-gulping equipment, which means new engine designs must be fuel-efficient and coupled with meager emissions and low noise.
Boom has diagnosed Concorde's operating flaws as twofold. First, the plane had ferociously high operating costs, driven primarily by its voracious appetite for jet fuel.
"Grossly uneconomic," in the words of a 1978 New York Times article summarizing critiques of the aircraft. Second, the Concorde's load factors were generally lean because of the steep fares Air France and British Airways were forced to charge, typically around $15,000 to $20,000 in current dollars.
Boom says it plans to address these shortcomings. The startup's signature city pairing is New York to London, which would take a little more than three hours to fly and give a corporate traveler the opportunity to make a day trip across the pond and back.
"It's about making the economics work and then delivering the aircraft we say we can deliver," said Boom's co-founder and chief executive officer, Blake Scholl, a pilot and former app developer.
Because of the sonic booms the planes would create, the company is focused on over-water routes and doesn't plan to market its aircraft for quick zips across America or places like the Middle East to Western Europe. Scholl says Boom's boom will be quieter than the Concorde was, but doesn't plan any type of regulatory push around the issue in the company's early days.
Boom has already struck a deal with the Spaceship Co., the manufacturing division of Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, to use that company's engineering, design, and flight-test support services. The Spaceship Co. also has options for Boom's first 10 aircraft as part of the arrangement.
Another unidentified European airline has taken options for 15 aircraft, Scholl says, and Boom is talking to carriers about options for an additional 170 aircraft.
An analysis by Boyd Group International, an aviation consulting firm, suggested that Boom could sell 1,300 supersonic passenger jets over 10 years for a premium service on routes frequented by corporate traffic. Boom's aircraft would target such global business centers as Hong Kong, London, New York, Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo, where corporate travelers would likely pay for the time savings a supersonic jet could afford.
The company will be forced to demonstrate that whatever positive performance data its models yield in computer simulations, the planes will hold up in the real and very brutal world of airline economics.
Boom plans to fly a one-third-size demonstrator version of its airplane called the XB-1 late next year, working with General Electric Co.
The biggest technical challenge, however, will probably be the engine, as noted in a recent analysis by Bjorn Fehrm, an aerospace consultant and a former fighter pilot in the Swedish air force. Fehrm estimated that the Boom design is likely to use about three times the amount of fuel per seat-mile than current flights between London and New York.
Beyond the engine performance, another issue for airlines would be how to market an upscale supersonic service alongside the premium cabins on existing jets, according to Alex Wilcox, CEO of JetSuite Inc., a California-based charter service and scheduled airline. Would the Boom aircraft siphon off most or all of a carrier's business- and first-class passengers? If so, what happens to that space on the current aircraft fleets?
"You'd have some interesting pricing discussions," Wilcox says. "How do you price it versus your first-class product into London? Into which you have invested quite a lot, by the way."
Being up in the air is fast becoming the same as being in the office, with robust Internet communication a priority for carriers, thus reducing the biggest attraction of supersonic flight -- speed. Mix that with the flat beds and premium dining, and the business-class cabin can become a comfortable den in which to be productive, rested, and well-fed on the kind of 15- to 20-hour flights that are quickly becoming routine.
"You used to be stuck in a tube," says Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace consultant at Teal Group. "Now it's an office in the sky. Everything has gotten way more comfortable."
Despite the challenges Boom faces, aviation experts expect that at some point the economic challenges of commercial supersonic travel will be overcome.
"I hate to sound cynical here, because I actually want to see this airplane," Wilcox said. "But it's just very, very hard to do."
SundayMonday Business on 12/05/2016