As much as some travelers value cheap airplane tickets and cheap vacation packages, high end business travelers and travelers who are not concerned with cost, often are looking for faster ways to get to their destinations. A new plane, the Aerion SBL (Supersonic Business Jet) is being developed to fill that need.
AerionCorporation is an advanced aeronautical engineering organization headquartered in Reno, Nevada.
The Aerion SBJ will be able to fly up to 12 passengers at speeds up to Mach 1.5 for over 4,000 miles. This jet is currently performing proof-of-concept aerodynamic testing of critical components in NASA wind tunnels and attached to the bottom of a NASA F-15 supersonic jet.
The SBJ will fly from Paris to New York in four hours and 14 minutes, saving three hours when compared to the time it takes conventional jets to fly transatlantic. This jet will be able to fly at a very high subsonic speed of Mach 0.98 in the United States, reducing coast to coast travel by 41 minutes. Supersonic passenger flights are banned in the U.S. because of Federal Aviation Administration sonic boom restrictions.
Supersonic passenger travel was discontinued in 2003 when British Airways and Air France ceased operations of their transatlantic Concorde service because of dropping revenues and increasing maintenance costs.
The reason the new Supersonic Business Jet is viable while the Concorde failed is because of its breakthrough supersonic wing design reduces drag, the resistance caused by air as a plane flies through it, on the plane. This efficiency makes it viable for top subsonic US coast to coast flights and the supersonic long haul trips.
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