U.S. prepares for supersonic flight... but there’s one big hurdle no one has solved

Passengers in the United States may soon have the option to fly at supersonic speeds for the first time since the retirement of Concorde more than 20 years ago.

Last week President Donald Trump signed an executive order which reversed a longstanding ban on supersonic air travel, promising to replace it with looser restrictions. The ban had been in place to prevent disruptive noise from the jets traveling across the country.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy director, Michael Kratsios, told reporters that Trump was going to “revolutionize supersonic aviation in the United States” by slashing restrictions.

Already the Senate has forwarded legislation that would push ahead with the re-integration of supersonic flight and there is already a front-runner in the race to bring the service to the public. Colorado-based Boom Supersonic is developing an aircraft called the Overture.

The Overture is the first supersonic passenger plane to be developed since Concorde was taken out of production and it proved capable of breaking the sound barrier during a demonstration earlier this year. However it’s not without problems.

The Overture’s maximum range of 4,888 miles is substantial but it does present a key barrier. That distance is enough for flights within the US or even to most of Europe, but it won’t cover a trip across the Pacific. This cuts off a major market of US-Asia passengers and will eat into potential profits.

It’s an issue that Blake School, founder and CEO of Boom, has acknowledged. He admitted that while this is a “super exciting year” for the company, there is still a lot of work to be done before the project becomes commercially viable.

“There’s no guarantee of success here — statistically failure is the most likely outcome — but it’s definitely possible,” Scholl told CNN. “The technology is there, the market is there, the passengers and airlines are there, the regulations for overland, I believe, will be there in relative short order. We just have to execute.”

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