About Boom Supersonic
Boom Supersonic was founded in 2014 by Blake Scholl, a former Amazon and Groupon executive with a personal passion for aviation, based on the observation that commercial air travel speeds had essentially stagnated, and in some respects regressed, since the Concorde's retirement in 2003, despite decades of advances in aerodynamics, materials science, and jet engine technology that Scholl argued made a modern, more economically viable supersonic aircraft achievable. The company's flagship program, Overture, is designed as a roughly 60- to 80-passenger supersonic airliner intended to fly at around Mach 1.7, cutting flight times on long-haul routes such as New York to London roughly in half compared to today's subsonic jets, while aiming to avoid the enormous fuel inefficiency and high operating costs that ultimately made the original Concorde commercially unviable for all but a small number of premium routes.
Boom has pursued a phased development approach, first building and flight-testing a smaller, single-seat demonstrator aircraft called the XB-1 to validate key aerodynamic and engineering concepts at supersonic speeds before committing to the full-scale Overture design, with the XB-1 achieving supersonic flight in early 2025. The company has also invested significantly in developing its own dedicated jet engine, called Symphony, after determining that no existing engine manufacturer offered a suitable off-the-shelf option for Overture's specific speed and efficiency requirements, and has emphasized that Overture is designed to run on 100% sustainable aviation fuel to address environmental concerns associated with supersonic flight's historically higher fuel consumption per passenger. Boom has secured provisional purchase agreements and orders from major airlines including United Airlines and American Airlines, reflecting significant industry interest in restoring supersonic passenger travel, and has raised substantial venture funding from investors including Y Combinator, Bessemer Venture Partners, and various airline strategic investors, though the timeline to Overture's first commercial passenger flights remains several years out and dependent on further engineering, certification, and manufacturing milestones.
