The Concorde, “the plane that turned the ocean into a pond” – as the American network – NBC said goodbye to it, made its last commercial flight on October 24, 2003. It was a low-altitude round trip flight between London and Edinburgh, as part of the farewell tour that British Airways, together with Airfrance, the only airline that had these supersonic planes, organized in the United Kingdom. Finally, on November 26, 2003, Concorde shut down its engines forever, when it flew to Bristol to enter the British Aviation Museum. The adventure had begun on January 21, 1976 and since then there has not been a commercial supersonic aircraft.
But things may be about to change and in 2030, another plane of these characteristics may make the world smaller again. All that is needed is for Boom Technology, the American company behind the design, development and launch of the Overture, another supersonic passenger plane, to meet its established deadlines. At the moment things are going well, although we must remember that Boom had promised that its plane would be ready in 2023. But the development of an engine that complies with emissions legislation, that is profitable from the point of view of consumption of fuel and that produces a low-impact sonic boom – the noise produced when a ship breaks the sound barrier – have delayed initial plans.
It must be taken into account that these three aspects are what have meant that, after Concorde, there has been no other attempt at supersonic aviation. Furthermore, Rolls-Royce, the British company that was initially involved in the project, finally abandoned it, so Boom has had to develop its own engines. It seems that he already has them and has named them Symphony, perhaps precisely to emphasize that the sound they produce will not be annoying when the plane flies over inhabited areas.
After a first test flight with the XB-1 prototype at speeds below Mach 1 (below the speed of sound, 1235.5 km/h), on March 22, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) , has granted the company permission to carry out the first supersonic flights.
In that first test flight, the plane rose to 2,170 meters above the Mojave Desert and reached a maximum speed of 439 km/h, very modest records taking into account what is expected of its future capabilities when the Overture is a reality. .
There is no date for these first supersonic flights, it is only known – according to Boom – that they will take place in “the Black Mountain supersonic corridor (California) and in a part of the High Altitude supersonic corridor, within the R-2515 airspace, which “It has been widely used for military supersonic aeronautical operations and research.” According to the company itself, before the first supersonic flight, between 10 and 20 more flights will be carried out below the speed of sound, to check that all the plane’s systems are working correctly.
When that first supersonic flight finally takes place, test pilot Tristan “Geppetto” Brandenberg will be at the controls. He is a Top Gun pilot, the elite of the US military aviators and with more than 2,500 hours of flight experience in combat aircraft. In principle, three flights are planned at speeds of Mach 1.1 (1,359.05 km/h), Mach 1.2 (1,482.6 km/h) and Mach 1.3 (1,606.15 km/h). It must be remembered that these speeds are still far from what the Concorde achieved, which reached 2,179 km/h, which almost doubled the speed of sound.
All in all, Boom assures that when the Overture becomes a reality it will be capable of transporting between 64 and 80 passengers at a speed of Mach 1.7 (2,100 km/h) – just over half of those that the Concorde could accommodate – from Madrid. to Atlanta in 4 hours and 35 minutes, instead of the current 8-hour flight duration.
