Boom Times for American Airlines: Betting on Supersonic Flights by 2029

American Airlines is purchasing a fleet of  Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft, with an option for an additional 40 on the commitment to offering breakneck supersonic point to point shuttles across the distances by 2029. American has paid a non-refundable deposit on the initial 20 aircraft. Overture is expected to carry passengers at twice the speed of today’s fastest commercial aircraft.

Boom Supersonic’s Overture would introduce an important new speed advantage to American’s fleet.

Overture is being designed to carry 65 to 80 passengers at Mach 1.7 over water — or twice the speed of today’s fastest commercial aircraft — with a range of 4,250 nautical miles. Optimized for speed, safety and sustainability, Overture is also being designed to fly more than 600 routes around the world in as little as half the time. Flying from Miami to London in just under five hours and Los Angeles to Honolulu in three hours are among the many possibilities.

In July, Boom revealed the final production design of Overture, which is slated to roll out in 2025 and carry its first passengers by 2029. Boom Supersonic seeks to transform air travel with Overture, currently the world’s fastest airliner, optimized for speed, safety, and sustainability. Overture will fly at twice the speed of today’s airliners and is designed to run on 100% sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). 

Overture’s order book, including purchases and options from American Airlines, United Airlines, and Japan Airlines stands at 130 aircraft. Boom is working with Northrop Grumman for government and defense applications as well. Suppliers and partners collaborating with Boom on the Overture program include Collins Aerospace, Eaton, Safran Landing Systems, Rolls-Royce, the United States Air Force, American Express, Climeworks, and AWS. 

The new craft design has emerged into the 21st century following the Concorde, the Anglo/French supersonic transport that flew passengers across the Atlantic in three-and-a-half hours between 1976 and 2003. Overture will cruise at Mach 1.7, or 1,300 miles per hour, rather than  Concorde’s Mach 2. The cabin will be slightly smaller than the Concorde — 65 to 80 passengers: Concorde carried 92 to 128.  And the mechanics of the new airline model are benefitting from all the science and progress in avionics made in the past half century. These include lighter composites, newer electronics and control engineering.

Amid that work has been the designing of carbon-neutral formulas for speed. Boom is taking “sustainable aviation fuel” to a new level with hydrogen and using solar energy and carbon dioxide harvested from the atmosphere.

As Boom’s visions gather interest and financial momentum, American, United and Japan Airlines are signing on at some $200 million per airliner, and the company is receiving ancillary grants for military developments. 

The company is in progress with plans for a mega factory in Greensboro, North Carolina, where production on these orders will commence. Flight tests of a finalized and full-sized Overture are expected to start in 2026 and take up with a full payload of  passengers by 2029. 

Critics claim the engine needed to push the plane to nearly Mach 2 speed is not in sight and may not be capable of meeting the vision of pushing the plane to supersonic speed. Others worry about environmental impacts on the earth’s atmosphere’s fragile ozone layer and whether a carbon neutral fueling solution is really possible. 

Then there is the sonic boom element that comes with such air speed. Supersonic airplanes create a shock wave behind them that resounds in sonic booms on the ground below – something that was mitigated in the past by limiting the Concorde’s routes to across the Atlantic. According to Boom’s computer-modeled designs the noise issue is described as much softer and acceptable than its predecessor.

Trip prices on Overture transAtlantic crossings are not expected to remain in Concorde’s stratospheric tiers ($4,000 to $6,000 per seat one-way) due to cheaper and more efficient fueling.