Supersonic jet dubbed Son of Concorde breaks sound barrier for first time with 844 mph flight

It took off with a bang.Boom Supersonic’s XB-1 jet broke the sound barrier for the first time on Monday as the American company seeks to deliver the world’s faster airliner capable of carrying passengers between New York and London in just over 3 1/2 hours.The single-seat jet, a 201-foot-long test model by Boom Supersonic, hit 844 mph just 12 minutes into its latest test flight out of California’s Mojave Air and Space Port.“We are so back [America],” company CEO Blake Scholl’s posted on X during the successful flight.The breakthrough for the aircraft came following repeated failures to break the sound barrier in previous test flights, with one earlier this month only reaching 728 mph.With Monday’s test, flown by Boom’s chief test pilot Tristan “Geppetto” Brandenburg, the XB-1 hit Mach 1.1, invigorating the company’s ambition to design a supersonic passenger plane capable of reaching Mach 1.7, or 1,304 mph.The XB-1 has been dubbed the “Son of Concorde,” referencing the supersonic plane that could fly from London to New York in under three hours before it was retired in 2003.

The Concorde was discontinued soon after a catastrophic Air France crash in Paris in July 2000 that killed 109 on board and four people on the ground.The XB-1 is the prototype for Boom’s Overture plane, a supersonic commercial aircraft that can carry 64 to 80 passengers at nearly double the speed of sound.Along with a three-hour, 40-minute trip from NYC to London, Overture promises travel from New York to Rome, Atlanta to Madrid, and Tokyo to Vancouver in about 4 1/2 hours.The highly anticipated plane already has 130 orders and pre-orders from several major airlines, including American Airlines, United Airlines and Japan Airlines.A trip from Washington, DC, to Dublin would log about 3 1/2 hours and a flight from Los Angeles to Tahiti would take about 4 1/2 hours, according to the company, while a trip from Montreal to Paris would be under four hours, Space.com repo...