The new era of supersonic commercial flights, will it work this time?

Concorde, if you ask an aviation fan who saw the Concorde flying live to tell you about the experience, be careful, as you will hear a love story. Even those who are not aviation fans know this name. The Concorde was one of the most fascinating engineering works the world has ever seen. But the question is, will we see another supersonic passenger aircraft, and will it work this time?

Several supersonic commercial aircraft projects were considered, but only two came to fruition: the Soviet TU-144 and the Anglo-Frances Concorde; both aircraft could fly at more than 2000km/h. The Soviet model had a short life with several problems in its development, and two fatal accidents at the very beginning of its career ended the project prematurely. The Concorde had a slightly longer life, but its end also came.

The End of Supersonics

On November 23, 2003, the world witnessed the last flight of a supersonic commercial plane; the Concorde performed its last dance with the British flag over the skies of England, turning off its engines for the last time and ending an era in world aviation. However, not everything was rosy in Concorde's career; the Anglo-French aircraft also had problems throughout its journey in the skies.

First, the oil crisis at the very beginning of the project meant that the leading airlines interested in the project ended up giving up, leaving only British Airways and AirFrance as buyers. When the aircraft was already in operation, another problem arose; due to the supersonic boom noise that the aircraft made when it surpassed the sound barrier, it was prohibited from flying at supersonic speeds over land, making only transatlantic flights viable, which ended up further reducing the use of the aircraft. But the problems did not end there; on July 25, 2000, in Paris, one of the planes operated by AirFrance crashed seconds after takeoff, killing everyone on board the aircraft and causing the FAA and other regulators to place a global ban on the model while trying to find and correct the problem that led to the accident. This ban was lifted in November 2001, in one of the most fragile moments global aviation has ever faced. Shortly after 9/11, the global aviation market was in recession, with less demand for travel from passengers. With all these events and the high operating and maintenance costs of the aircraft, the only two aircraft operators decided to end the Concorde project in 2003.

And 20 years later?

Concorde was an aircraft developed in the last century, and it was unable to adapt to the needs of this new era of aviation. As we saw with the A380 and its short career, the most ambitious project is not always successful. The Concorde was launched in 1969, the same year that man set foot on the moon for the first time, in a decade of great innovation in which humanity wanted to overcome all the barriers of what we thought was impossible. Today, the world is no longer the same as it was 60 years ago.

The Concorde was not a failure; the Concorde marked the History of aviation and the History of humanity, and shortly, we will again see a commercial supersonic aircraft taking off the ground and conquering the skies. In a world where time is our most precise asset, perhaps flying faster than ever will save us more time and shorten the distance even further.

New projects like Boom Supersonic's Overture are the future of commercial supersonic flights and with companies like NASA and Lockheed Martin pushing supersonic aircraft technology and engineering forward with their new X-59 aircraft and the long-promised reduction of Boom Supersonic, perhaps a promising future for supersonic commercial flights is just around the corner.