When the Concorde jet program was first introduced in 1976, it revolutionized air travel. These impressive machines could attain top speeds of Mach 2.04; that’s over 1,550 mph! Normally a flight from New York to London would take around 8 hours to complete. On a Concorde? It would make that trip in around three hours. For business travelers it was a dream machine, however there were some issues. For one the cost of the program was extremely high. The jets were expensive to produce, expensive to maintain, and they consumed fuel like there was no tomorrow. Additionally tickets for a flight were also absurdly expensive, so the jets would only cater to a small market. The combination of those facts, a tragic accident in 2000, and 9/11, and the Concorde program was abandoned in 2003. Since then, we haven’t had a commercial supersonic jet program, however one company is looking to change that.
The Aerion Corporation is an American aerospace company based out of Reno, Nevada and they are looking to produce the supersonic business jet for the modern era. In a partnership with Airbus, Aerion has created and designed a new concept jet called the AS2 and it will be able to achieve supersonic flight; a jet that flies faster than the speed of sound. The best thing is, it’s going to be here sooner than you might think.
It takes a considerable amount of time for any company to bring a new product to market, and that is especially the case for commercial airplanes. They have to be extensively tested and pass a variety of rigorous exams before they can be released. Aerion tells us that we should expect the first fleet of AS2’s to be available sometime in 2022.
The AS2 features a sleek and futuristic design, as it needs to be able to achieve those incredible speeds. The jets will be extremely luxurious and can fit anywhere from eight to twelve passengers depending on the configuration. The AS2 will be able to achieve speeds between Mach 1.2 to 1.5 (760mph to 1,140mph) and it will have a range of over 5,700 miles. While it’s not as fast as the Concorde, it will be faster than every commercial jet currently on the market. Aerion predicts that the cost of developing, refining, and producing the AS2 program will be well over $1 billion, and the jets themselves will individually cost around $100 million. While that’s extremely expensive, they will be able to reduce travel time to destination by up to 75%. All-in-all, it seems like the AS2 has much to offer travelers with a lot of disposable income because I doubt tickets will be cheap. It will be great to see a new supersonic commercial jet program because no one likes to be crammed in a jet for over 8 hours.
Photo from Aerion Corporation
