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Super Fast Planes: What If Supersonic Flights Made A Super Comeback?
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Mar 31, 2025
Supersonic airplanes have existed for more than 8 decades, but the technology not yet become a regular part of life. 60 years ago, that almost changed entirely. The Concorde jet flew passengers around the world at a speed greater than 1,300 miles per hour. Today, however, there are no supersonic passenger flights in existence. But what if the technology was widespread throughout the aviation industry?
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Supersonic planes are not a new technology
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The military has been using and researching supersonic jets for decades. And up until 2003, passengers were able to fly on a supersonic passenger airplane themselves
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Unfortunately, for time-conscious travelers, this specific aerospace technology receded from the commercial airline industry and has yet to return
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But what if the airline industry was run on supersonic planes today? Hello and welcome to What If Geography, where we try and answer the great geographic what-if
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questions of the world. I'm your host Jeff Gibson, and today we're talking about supersonic
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passenger airplanes. While supersonic airplanes were poised to take off a few decades ago
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the technology wasn't quite ready for primetime due to a number of reasons. But if it had
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the world would feel much smaller than it does today. But before we talk about what a passenger
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airline industry would look like today, let's dive into just a little bit of history first
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Supersonic airplanes are not like regular airplanes. Where a traditional passenger plane
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will travel anywhere from 450 miles per hour to 575 miles per hour, depending on destination
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a supersonic plane will travel faster than the speed of sound, which is 767 miles per hour
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and actually quite a bit faster than that. So you can imagine the allure of a supersonic
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passenger airline industry from a time perspective. But while this might seem like a technology that's
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cutting edge, or on the verge of breaking into the commercial airline industry, it is neither
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Supersonic aerospace technology has been around for almost 80 years. The first manned supersonic
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flight was performed by the US military and occurred on October 14, 1947, less than a month
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after the US Air Force had been created. In its debut flight, the Bell X-1 managed to reach a top
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speed of nearly 800 miles per hour. That's incredible for the time, and it directly led to
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what the first astronauts would be piloting in their Apollo space missions 20 years later
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But while the military flying supersonic jets 80 years ago is definitely impressive
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it's not really all that surprising. The military is typically at the cutting edge of technology
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What's more impressive is that, beginning in 1976, regular commercial passenger service began using
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a supersonic plane called the Concorde. The Concorde was a modern marvel for its time
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It's actually still a remarkable airplane even by today's standards. After all we currently have no supersonic passenger airplanes in active passenger service today But to give you an idea of just how transformational it was the Concorde had a maximum cruising speed of 1 miles per hour
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Recall that a modern passenger plane today can travel around 575 miles per hour
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That's an incredible jump in speed. In 1996, the Concorde flew from London to New York City in just 2 hours and 56 minutes
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The average flight time today on that exact same route is about 8 hours
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Unfortunately for the future of supersonic flight, the Concorde was not long for this world
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On July 25, 2000, a Concorde flight was departing Paris to go to New York City
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As the flight was taking off, the aircraft hit some debris on the runway, which then struck the wing and ruptured a fuel tank causing the aircraft to crash just two minutes after takeoff
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All 109 people on board were killed. Until this incident, the Concorde was considered to be one of the world's safest commercial airplanes
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However, the crash caused additional insecurity from potential passengers, and the Concorde was already a money-losing venture
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As such, in October 2003, the aircraft was officially retired for good
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Since then, there's been no commercial supersonic flights in service. Today, supersonic airplanes are once again relegated to the halls of future technology
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with a lot of promise, but not a lot of progress. Despite having some very serious problem with physics, which we'll get to in a little bit
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the upside to supersonic travel is very obvious. Being able to get from one side of the planet to the other in less than half the time it takes a
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day would be a monumental shift in how we see our world. But before we dive into the effects
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of decreased travel time, if you're enjoying this video, now would be a great time to subscribe
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More fun geography videos are just one click away. In order to understand the impact that supersonic flights would have today
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we have to first dredge up an old geographic theory called the time-space compression theory
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This theory basically states that as transportation technologies have evolved and become faster, the world becomes smaller
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This is because the amount of time it takes to get from point A to point B gets shorter
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as the method of transportation gets faster. Think back to the year 1600
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In that century, if you were to travel from Europe to North America, it would take about 66 days
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Today, that same voyage can be done in about eight hours by plane. The fact that you can wake up today
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and physically be halfway around the world in the same day has been revolutionary for the world
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And this happens on the macro level as well. Prior to the invention of the car traveling from one side of the city to the other would be a much longer affair Today people will often do it as part of their normal commute to and from work Now this has had both positive and negative effects
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on society at large. While it's nice that we can travel to Europe or Asia
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within a single day and visit places that past generations have never even considered
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it's also created large economic and environmental issues. For example, the globalization of the world
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beginning in the latter half of the 20th century can be directly tied to advances in transportation and logistics systems
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Additionally, the transportation system we have today is not exactly environmentally friendly
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In fact, in the United States alone, transportation makes up about 25% of the country's total emissions
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The point of this is simply to point out that shorter travel times do not exclusively output positive results
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If the world were to adopt supersonic commercial flights, it would likely come with negative effects such as increased pollution in addition to shorter travel times
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There are no supersonic flights in service today, and there doesn't appear to be any service coming in the immediate future
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But development on supersonic airplanes is occurring. One company, called Boom Supersonic
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has been developing a new supersonic passenger plane since 2014. When in service, their airplane, the Boom Overture
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will fly anywhere from 65 to 88 passengers at a speed of about 1,100 miles per hour
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In 2021, United Airlines signed a deal to purchase 15 Boom Overtures
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and for service to begin in 2029, which begs the question, what will a world filled with supersonic air passenger travel
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look like when it actually does become a reality? The first thing we know for sure
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is that supersonic flights will never make up even 50% of all flights on the planet
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This is because the vast majority of flights are what we would call short haul, which are flights that are less than three hours
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in total length. This would be a flight such as Washington DC to Boston or Portland to San Francisco
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You get settled in, and before you know it, the pilot informs you that the plane is beginning its descent. At these lengths, a supersonic flight doesn't make much sense as the
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time savings are minimal and the supersonic flight wouldn't be able to get up to its full speed
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anyway. Instead, it'll be long-haul flights that convert to supersonic flights. These are flights
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that take longer than six hours to complete. These flights also make up less than 5% of all flights
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in the world. However, at these lengths, a supersonic flight can hit its full speed and
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drastically shorten the time spent in air. So a flight from London to New York City could be as
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fastest three and a half hours where today it about six and a half hours A flight from San Francisco to Tokyo could be as fast as six hours where today it takes over 10 hours Those are serious time savings But you
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probably notice that all of the previous examples are transatlantic and trans-Pacific flights
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That's not to say there won't ever be a supersonic flight from Los Angeles to New York City, but it does carry one particularly burdensome problem
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The sonic boom is a phenomenon where, when an object breaks the sound barrier
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a very loud booming sound is emitted. This raises an interesting problem for supersonic airplanes
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that will be traveling over highly populated areas, as the sound can be quite jarring and have unintended side effects
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And we know this because the U.S. government purposefully used Oklahoma City as a guinea pig for its sonic boom experiments for about six months
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Starting in February of 1964, the U.S. government intentionally flew supersonic jets over Oklahoma City
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seven times a day in order to trigger multiple sonic booms. The intent was to see how it affected the population living below
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In total, the US military generated 1,253 sonic booms over the city
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And during this time, the city endured unusual side effects such as glass shattering from
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windows to fish refusing to come to the surface of nearby lakes. Eventually, city residents got so fed up that they forced the US government to stop the tests early
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So all this is to say that any return to supersonic passenger flights will face an additional obstacle
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People don't want to be subjected to constant sonic booms all day long. The final flight of the Concorde was from New York City to Seattle
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and the only way that this flight was allowed to go supersonic was by flying through Canada as the United States would not allow the flight to go supersonic
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due to the supersonic boom issue. A future where supersonic flights are normal
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will need to consider the effects of sonic booms on local populations, which is not an easy task
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Supersonic air passenger flights are likely coming in the not-too-distant future. The technology has been used and proven for over 80 years
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However, while supersonic air flights will definitely shorten long-haul flights, they also come with unintended side effects such as increased globalization
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high atmosphere pollution, and mental health effects from sonic booms. That's not to say the technology shouldn't come
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but also maybe it's okay that it takes six hours to get to Europe, then three hours
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Just a thought. I hope you enjoyed today's episode on commercial supersonic flights
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If you did, please subscribe to my channel. And if you want to watch more of my What If Geography videos, you can do so here
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Thanks for watching. See you next time
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