Boom to make a big noise at show about shortening long-haul travel

A one-way Emirates flight in an Airbus A380 business-class seat from Dubai to Sydney takes about 13.5h at Mach 0.85.

Boom Supersonic has a plan to shorten the trip by about 6h by 2023 with a new 55-seat airliner capable of flying Mach 2.2 on the same route over the Indian Ocean.

The Colorado-based start-up will make a debut appearance in the Dubai air show exhibit hall in booth 1676.

As the UAE already functions as a subsonic hub for Europe, Asia and Oceania, Boom founder and chief executive Blake Scholl will make the case that it is soon poised to become a supersonic hub – perhaps with the region’s major airlines as customers.

Since launching the programme within the Y Combinator startup incubation programme in 2016, Scholl, a pilot and former Amazon executive, has raised $41 million, launched development of the XB-1 “Baby Boom” supersonic prototype and collected 76 order commitments from multiple customers, including Virgin.

The Dubai air show is not Scholl’s first stop in the UAE as the head of Boom. In April, Scholl introduced his company’s vision for reviving commercial supersonic flight at the Dubai Future Foundation, according to the UAE newspaper The National.

Scholl aligns the Boom project with Dubai’s innovative vision for revolutionising travel, which has embraced development of a local network of autonomous trains, cars and air taxis.

“Supersonic flight is the biggest leap forward since the jet, removing time barriers and allowing passengers to make business and leisure trips to destinations that otherwise would have been too far,” Scholl says in a news release. “We’re excited to be here sharing our progress toward a faster future.”

Boom’s goal may be a faster future, but it merely revives a faster past.

(Evangle Luo of TTFLY shared with you)