United Bets on
Supersonic Future with $3 Billion Boom Jet Order
By Justin Bachman
June 3, 2021, 12:00 PM GMT+1
Carrier predicts
trans-Atlantic day trips, six hours to Tokyo
First commercial
airline service isn’t expected until 2029
United Airlines Holdings Inc. is jumping into the potential
market for supersonic travel with the first firm order for Boom Technology
Inc.’s Overture aircraft, wagering that business flyers will pay top dollar for
speedier trips across oceans.
The airline will buy 15 of the supersonic jets, which
are expected to carry passengers in 2029, the companies said in a statement
Thursday. At $200 million a plane, the deal is valued at $3 billion at
list prices and Boom doesn’t offer discounts, said Blake Scholl, the aircraft
developer’s founder and chief executive officer. United also took purchase
options for 35 more planes.
United plans to be the debut operator of the Overture, which
will be able to seat as many as 88 people. The airline’s coastal hubs in
leading business-travel markets make the jet “uniquely useful” for United, said
Mike Leskinen, vice president of corporate development. While supersonic flight
is banned over land in the U.S., United sees three and-a-half hour jaunts to
London from Newark, New Jersey, and six-hour trips to Tokyo from San Francisco.
“It has a tremendous amount of value for a big chunk of our
high-end business customers,” Leskinen said. “We’ve got our eyes firmly on New
York to London for inaugural service and we will evaluate opportunities beyond
that.”
Boom is trying to surmount the aeronautical and financial
challenges needed to bring back supersonic commercial flights for the first
time since the demise of Europe’s Concorde in 2003. It’s still an uphill climb.
Boom has raised more than $250 million so far, and development costs to
make the Overture’s first flight a reality are projected to be as high as $8 billion, Scholl said.
The company, based in suburban Denver, announced the
landmark deal with United less than a month since the collapse of Aerion Corp.,
which had amassed $11 billion in orders for a planned supersonic business jet.
Aerion said May 21 it was unable to secure adequate funding to continue.
Cash Deposit
For Boom, the United pact marks the first time a customer
has made a cash deposit for the carbon-fiber Overture. Japan Airlines Co. and
Richard Branson’s Virgin Group have placed “pre-orders” for the aircraft, which
essentially give them options to acquire the jet, Boom said.
United is confident in Boom’s path in getting “from point A
to point B to point C” in the Overture’s development, Leskinen said. The
Chicago-based airline declined to discuss financial details of the order.
The market for new supersonic aircraft could be $160 billion
by 2040, according to a December report by UBS Group AG analyst Myles Walton.
The extra speed would be most alluring for business customers, but prices could
be too high for some, Walton said.
At sea level, the speed of sound is 760 miles per hour
(1,223 kilometers per hour). Overture jets will fly at around 1,300 miles
per hour, or Mach 1.7, about twice as fast as conventional jetliners,
according to Boom. The cruising altitude of 60,000 feet will be higher
than most other commercial air traffic. Like the Concorde, it will break the
sound barrier only over oceans.
“I’ve done a lot of business trips around the U.S. that I
make day trips -- I can get back to see my kids that evening,” Leskinen said.
“This will open up Western Europe to do the same.”
Concorde Costs
The Concorde flew for 27 years until 2003, cruising over the
Atlantic at Mach 2, or more than 1,500 mph. But because of its voracious
appetite for fuel and high operating costs, only two airlines -- Air France and
British Airways -- flew the aircraft routinely, and fewer than two dozen were
built. The Overture will be 75% cheaper to operate, Scholl said.
Last year, Boom announced a collaboration with Rolls-Royce
Holdings Plc to design the propulsion system for the Overture by repurposing
some of the British engine maker’s technologies. The jet will be “optimized” to
fly with 100% sustainable aviation fuel and have zero net carbon emissions,
United said.
In October, Boom unveiled a smaller demonstration model, the
XB-1, which the company expects to use for test flights beginning this year.
That aircraft will be powered by older General Electric Co. engines used
on several fighter jets. Boom plans to begin Overture production in 2023.
“High speed is going to replace subsonic over long
distances,” Scholl said. “This is about unlocking travel that we don’t have
today.”
No comments:
Post a Comment