World's "Fastest Airliner" Could Cross Atlantic In Just 3.5 Hours

"Aviation has not seen a giant leap in decades."

The Overture

Airline company Boom Supersonic has shown off brand new renders of its Overture aircraft, which it claims will become the "world's fastest airliner."

The company unveiled the "production design" of the sleek jet, which includes four engines, a new fuselage, and fewer passenger seats compared to previous iterations.

Needless to say, the aircraft is fast as hell, with a cruising at Mach 1.7 over water and just under Mach 1 over land, meaning it could fly from New York to London in just 3.5 hours.

"Aviation has not seen a giant leap in decades," said Boom founder and CEO Blake Scholl in a statement. "Overture is revolutionary in its design, and it will fundamentally change how we think about distance."

In other words — if it were to ever go into production — the Overture could give the ailing airline industry a much needed tech upgrade and injection of excitement.

 

Military Style

Boom Supersonic also announced that it's collaborating with contractor Northrop Grumman to create military and emergency response variants of the aircraft.

Scholl said the collaboration could "provide the US and our allies with an unmatched high-speed capability when and where it’s most needed," including assistance during "quick-reaction surveillance and reconnaissance, command and control, as well as mobility and logistics missions."

Iron Bird

Now, the company has the gargantuan task of bringing the futuristic airplane into production. Boom will start by building an "iron bird," a 100 by 200 feet steel skeleton used for testing flight components and systems.

It's unclear when we'll see the first Overture being built — so far, the company has only built a one-third-scale demonstrator called XB-1 that's expected to be flight tested some time this year.

It's also worth pointing out that even if the company hits its ambitious goals, it won't quite be beating the bar set by Sud Aviation and British Aircraft Corporation's iconic Concorde jet, which set the record of traveling from New York to London in just two hours and 52 minutes back in 1996.

Nonetheless, it's an exciting vision of what passenger airliners could look like in the future.

Updated to include mention of the Concorde for context.

READ MORE: Boom Supersonic and Northrop Grumman team up to build superfast US military aircraft [Space.com]

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