{"id":8719,"date":"2026-08-06T12:04:27","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T12:04:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationtimess.com\/?p=8719"},"modified":"2026-08-06T12:04:27","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T12:04:27","slug":"supersonic-flight-is-making-a-comeback-decades-after-the-concorde-but-one-big-hurdle-remains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationtimess.com\/?p=8719","title":{"rendered":"Supersonic flight is making a comeback decades after the Concorde. But one big hurdle remains"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n The skies of Oklahoma City roared for six months in 1964 as military aircraft intentionally rattled the population below with a daily barrage of thunderous sonic booms. It was a controversial test \u2014 the consequences of which have lingered to this day.\n <\/p>

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\n The booms \u2014 1,253 in total \u2014 were part of an effort by the US Federal Aviation Administration to gauge the public\u2019s attitude toward supersonic flight. Faster than the speed of sound, such flights hold the potential to cut travel time in half. But the test was a major catalyst would eventually spell doom for commercial supersonic journeys over the United States.\n <\/p>\n

\n Congress canceled funding in 1971 for Boeing\u2019s proposed supersonic aircraft, the 2707, leaving only two contestants in the passenger supersonic race: Europe\u2019s Concorde and the Soviet Union\u2019s ill-fated rival model, the Tupolev Tu-144. Then, the FAA effectively banned civilian supersonic flight over land in the US in 1973 by prohibiting civil aircraft from flying faster than Mach 1, or the sound barrier, thus preventing sonic booms. Concorde became the only commercial supersonic airliner, flying the skies from 1976 to 2003. The jet never had a successor.\n <\/p>\n

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\nAn artist’s rendition depicts the Boeing 2707. The company hoped it would be the first American supersonic airliner before Congress canceled funding in 1971.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Photo12\/Collection Bernard Crochet\/Universal Images Group\/Getty Images<\/figcaption>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n Now, some 50 years on from the ban, a new era of supersonic flight seems within reach. The FAA in June for reimagined rules on supersonic flight. The document includes switching from a speed-based to a noise-based standard and repealing the 1973 prohibition. The agency is aiming to finalize these new standards by mid-2027.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt\u2019s a long time in coming,\u201d said Juan Alonso, a professor in the department of aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford University in California. \u201cI think it\u2019s a welcome legislation, and I would say NASA and the US industry have been pushing in this direction for a very long time.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n But even with the door cracked open again to faster-than-sound travel over land, the airline industry still has one \u2014 rather loud \u2014 problem to fully solve.\n <\/p>\n

\n When an airplane or spacecraft exceeds the speed of sound, it creates a large shock wave that makes a sound called a sonic boom. On the ground, the boom manifests as a loud, explosion-like bang that can be startling and sometimes crack windows. The noise levels generated by the booms can even have an impact on human health, some research has suggested.\n <\/p>\n

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\nStarship’s Super Heavy Booster is grappled at the launch pad in Starbase near Boca Chica, Texas, on October 13, 2024, during the Starship Flight 5 test. SpaceX successfully “caught” the first-stage booster of its Starship megarocket Sunday as it returned to the launch pad after a test flight, a world first in the company’s quest for rapid reusability. (Photo by SERGIO FLORES \/ AFP) (Photo by SERGIO FLORES\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Sergio Flores\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/figcaption>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\n A University of Chicago survey of 3,000 Oklahoma City residents at the end of the 1964 test found that 73% felt they could live with sonic booms. However, the program generated to stop the flights, and the FAA received about from people complaining about the noise. The agency eventually had to compensate some locals for damage to windows and walls.\n <\/p>\n

\n Two approaches in the works could revolutionize air travel by making future supersonic passenger planes compliant with the FAA\u2019s new noise rules: Colorado-based company Boom Supersonic, which is specifically mentioned in the FAA proposal, plans to use physics to prevent sonic booms from ever reaching the ground, regardless of plane design. NASA, on the other hand, is flying an experimental plane called X-59 that is specifically designed to reduce the intensity of the boom.\n <\/p>\n

\n The success or failure of these divergent solutions could determine how fast supersonic travel can return, without the noise complaints that grounded it decades ago, and just how many people will benefit.\n <\/p>\n

\n Wave-bending Mach cutoff\n<\/h2>\n

\n When Concorde entered passenger service in January 1976, the only routes initially offered by its two carriers \u2014 British Airways and Air France \u2014 were London to Bahrain and Paris to Rio de Janeiro.\n <\/p>\n

\n The plane encountered immediate opposition due to its high operating costs and noise, including the sonic booms. Transatlantic flights to New York City\u2019s John F. Kennedy International Airport didn\u2019t start until late 1977, after the US Supreme Court that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey had instituted over noise concerns.\n <\/p>\n

\n Unable to fly over land in North America and much of Europe, the plane was eventually only used to connect New York to Paris and London, and for expensive charter flights to luxury holiday destinations. After a catastrophic crash in 2000 that killed 113 people and a brief return to service, Concorde was retired in 2003. Only 14 of the aircraft ever entered service.\n <\/p>\n

\n The post-Concorde supersonic era could look quite different. In its new proposal, the FAA indicates the exact threshold of sound pressure at the surface that any aircraft flying over land in the US would be allowed to produce 0.11 pound per square foot, which is equal to a moderate thump. By comparison, the Oklahoma tests produced booms as intense as 1.6 pounds per square foot, over 14 times more than the FAA\u2019s proposed new limit.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cManufacturers have demonstrated it is possible to fly supersonic aircraft without sonic booms reaching the surface by using sonic boom abatement techniques, making complete prohibition on civil supersonic flight outside of test areas no longer appropriate, and an unnecessary restraint on the growth of the U.S. aviation sector,\u201d the document says.\n <\/p>\n

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\nA Schlieren image of the Boom XB-1 visualizes the flow away from the surface of the aircraft.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Courtesy Boom Supersonic<\/figcaption>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n One of these techniques, the FAA noted, is called Mach cutoff. Boom Supersonic, which also calls it \u201cboomless cruise,\u201d executed a demo flight in February 2025.\n <\/p>\n

\n A plane using Mach cutoff has to fly at a slightly higher altitude than normal airliners and use precise navigation based on each flight\u2019s atmospheric conditions. If the technique is executed correctly, the shock wave produced when the plane breaks the sound barrier bends upward due to temperature and wind speed changes between the air at altitude and the air closer to the ground. If executed correctly, Mach cutoff results in no sonic boom reaching the ground at all.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThat\u2019s about breaking the sound barrier at sufficiently high altitude, generally above 30,000 feet, and it\u2019s about having the computational power and the software to be able to calculate the fastest and most efficient quiet speed for any given day\u2019s weather,\u201d said CEO Blake Scholl, who founded Boom Supersonic in 2014.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt\u2019s super simple for the pilots,\u201d Scholl added. \u201cOn our future airliner, Overture, there will be a \u2018quiet\u2019 button, and it will set the speed automatically, flying at the fastest and most efficient speed possible without creating an audible boom. And when you\u2019re out over the open ocean, you can accelerate and go even faster.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

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\nAttendees walk past a poster of Boom Supersonic’s Overture aircraft concept at the Farnborough Airshow, in England’s county of Hampshire, in July 2022.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Justin Tallis\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/figcaption>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n The concept of Mach cutoff isn\u2019t new. Lockheed Martin engineers it in the 1960s, and NASA did some tests with FAA approval in the 1970s that concluded the approach was viable.\n <\/p>\n

\n Some Concorde flights technically achieved Mach cutoff, according to Scholl. \u201cIf you talk to Concorde pilots privately, they\u2019ll tell you that sometimes Mach cutoff happened, but they didn\u2019t know how to do it reliably, and they didn\u2019t know how to do it efficiently,\u201d he said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t invent the physics, we didn\u2019t even discover the physics. I think we were the first to make them practical, and to make them practical, you need the computational power to calculate the speeds and altitudes in real time, and you need a power train that can fly low supersonic efficiently, which Concorde didn\u2019t have.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n NASA\u2019s current strategy to canceling sonic booms, however, is radically different and doesn\u2019t rely on navigation or speed at all \u2014 it\u2019s based, instead, on aircraft design.\n <\/p>\n

\n A low-boom shape\n<\/h2>\n

\n With its experimental X-59 aircraft, NASA aimed to make the plane into a \u201clow-boom\u201d shape that prevents the formation of a highly dense, concentrated shock wave.\n <\/p>\n

\n The look of the X-59 is sleek and peculiar: a super-elongated nose, an extremely smooth underside and no front-facing window at all. The pilot has a 4K ultra-high-definition screen in the cockpit instead, which re-creates the outside view digitally. The design will allow the plane to produce a sonic \u201cthump\u201d comparable to a car door shutting about 20 feet (6 meters) away instead of a loud boom, according to NASA.\n <\/p>\n

\n Any aircraft while flying produces various shock waves of differing strengths, scattered along the fuselage: for example at the nose, the canopy or the engine inlet. When a plane travels faster than the speed of sound, these shock waves pile up on each other until they create what Peter Coen, mission integration manager for NASA\u2019s Quesst mission under which the X-59 plane is being developed, calls \u201ca stable system.\u201d In this scenario, two shock waves \u2014 one at the nose and one at the tail, with a long expansion between them, is the system that creates an intense sonic boom.\n <\/p>\n

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