The Federal Aviation Administration announced a proposed rule change Tuesday that would lift the ban on supersonic flights over the continental U.S. by non-military planes, a policy that’s been in place since 1973.
Planes traveling over Mach 1 typically cause sonic booms, shock waves made by planes traveling faster than the speed of sound. Sonic booms over the land can cause property damage, as they did in the 1960s when military planes would shatter windows and break dishes in the homes below.
New technological advancements have made the 53-year-old ban obsolete, according to the FAA, and so the Trump administration wants to return over-land supersonic air travel to the U.S.. The Concorde, which flew from 1976-2003 and could travel from London to New York in just three hours, flew primarily over the Atlantic Ocean where sonic booms rarely disturbed humans living below.
“Advances in aerospace engineering, materials science, noise reduction, and new operational concepts will eliminate the old sonic boom,” FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said Tuesday in a statement. “This means we can ultimately repeal the ban from the 1970s on supersonic flight over U.S. territory while minimizing noise impacts to residents in communities along the route and near airports.”
Silencing the sonic boom generates renewed interest
The FAA said in its announcement that the agency plans to propose another rule this year that will establish landing and takeoff noise standards for supersonic aircraft traveling over land. The goal is to give private manufacturers guidance so they can finalize designs that will allow supersonic travel over the U.S.
Blake Scholl, the CEO of Colorado’s Boom Supersonic, has been developing a commercial aircraft called Overture that can carry 60-80 passengers and travel at supersonic speeds without causing sonic booms. But there’s still a maximum speed that can’t be exceeded, according to Scholl, which is slightly over Mach 1.
One way to get around the sonic boom is a concept called Mach cutoff, which Scholl explained in a series of tweets last year while advocating for a change in the law. “When an aircraft breaks the sound barrier at a sufficiently high altitude, the boom refracts in the atmosphere and curls upward without reaching the ground. It makes a U-turn before anyone can hear it,” Scholl explained.
Boom has seen interest from U.S. airlines like American and United, as well as Japan Airlines. What’s more, last week NASA posted a video showing the agency’s X-59 supersonic research aircraft. The X-59 can reach a speed of Mach 1.4 at 55,000 feet without disturbing people below with sonic booms. NASA is still compiling community response data, according to the video.
Will supersonic travel take off?
The dream of supersonic air travel was one that seemed to come and go with the final Concorde flight in 2003, but even before the Concorde, the U.S. military was trying to figure what the average American might tolerate.
Back in 1964, the military and FAA conducted a six-month experiment on the residents of Oklahoma City. Dubbed Operation Bongo II, the Air Force conducted flights over the city that created sonic booms. They received 15,000 formal complaints from people who lived in Oklahoma City along with 4,629 claims of damage.
Public polling from the time showed that roughly 40% of Oklahoma City residents felt their homes had been damaged in some way during the experiments but 73% said they could live with it. The city’s reliance on the aerospace industry and the incessant beat of military propaganda aimed at Americans during this time may have had something to do with that, however.
It seems Americans would be much less tolerant of that kind of damage today, but if private industry can indeed fix the sonic boom issue, there’s no real reason for people to complain. The question that remains is whether it makes sense financially. A round trip ticket on the Concorde cost $12,000 in 2003, over $22,100 adjusted for inflation. With many Americans struggling just to get by, any supersonic aircraft would likely be marketed to more affluent customers.
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