Supersonic Flight

Ask the average person on the street whom they would regard as the ultimate pilot, and you will typically get one of two answers: Charles Lindbergh and Chuck Yeager. The US Army Air Corps (and later US Air Force) pilot captured the world’s attention with his heroic feats, several of which advanced human in flight […]

Boom Supersonic is joining forces with aerospace engineering giant Collins Aerospace to collaborate on the nacelle technology development needed for Boom’s Overture supersonic commercial aircraft. In related news. Boom recently celebrated the rollout of the XB-1 technology demonstrator—a precursor to the development of the Overture test aircraft—at its facility at Centennial Airport in Colorado. “Through […]

NASA’s first large scale, piloted X-plane in more than three decades is cleared for final assembly and integration of its systems following a major project review by senior managers held December 12, 2019 at NASA’s headquarters in Washington. The management review, known as Key Decision Point-D (KDP-D), was the last programmatic hurdle for the X-59 […]

While the vision of economically viable supersonic commercial flight invested in Concorde was never fully realized, the airplane still stands as an icon to those who would try again to achieve that goal. Boom Supersonic, working to make that vision a reality, announced at the Paris Air Show this week that it is ready to […]

The DOT and the FAA are taking steps to advance the development of civil supersonic aircraft beginning with the FAA’s initiation of two rulemaking activities on civil supersonic aircraft noise. The first is a proposed rule for noise certification of supersonic aircraft, the second a proposed rule to streamline and clarify the procedures to obtain […]

Tactical Air Support, Inc, has completed a first on a Northrop F-5 equipped with Garmin‘s G3000 integrated avionics system. The supersonic airplane will soon be used by the U.S. Navy for air-to-air combat training, close-air support training, tactics development and evaluation support, Garmin said. “The maiden flight of the G3000-equipped F-5 is a significant achievement […]

NASA said last week it has officially committed to a development timeline that will lead to the first flight of its X-59 Quiet Supersonic Technology (QueSST) aircraft by 2021. Development of X-59 QueSST falls under the Low Boom Flight Demonstrator project, part of the Integrated Aviation Systems Program in NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate. The […]

Aerion’s CEO Tom Vice announced at NBAA’s Business Aviation Convention and Expo that the conceptual design phase for the AS2 supersonic jet is complete. The company is now starting the preliminary design phase and expects to begin initial flight testing of the 12-passenger jet in 2023. The Reno, Nevada-based company hopes to achieve certification for […]

This month, a research program called SonicBAT II (short for Sonic Booms in Atmospheric Turbulence), is set to begin to help understand sonic booms and how to reduce the noise associated with supersonic flight. The program is a partnership between NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Armstrong Flight Research Center in California, Langley Research Center […]

Most U.S. pilots know there’s an FAR restricting a civil aircraft from exceeding the speed of sound over land thanks to the annoying boom that people on the ground experience when one flies nearby. Over the next few months, NASA believes successful wind-tunnel testing of a 9 percent scale model of Lockheed Martin’s X-plane, at […]