If you’re a frequent traveller, you know that flying from coast to coast takes up most of the day and can leave you exhausted. I personally find the travel from the West Coast to the East to be much worse than the reverse journey because of the time zones involved, but both can be grueling.
President Donald Trump wants to do something about that, and on Friday, he signed an executive order taking us back in time and once again allowing supersonic (faster than the speed of sound) commercial air travel. It was titled, aptly, “President Donald J. Trump Takes Action to Lead the World in Supersonic Flight,” and it called for the removal of burdensome regulations that had effectively grounded the high-speed flights.
LEADING THE WORLD IN SUPERSONIC FLIGHT: Today, President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order to promote supersonic aviation in the United States.
- America once led the world in supersonic aviation, but decades of stifling regulations grounded progress. This Order removes regulatory barriers so that U.S. companies can dominate supersonic flight once again.
- The Order directs the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to repeal the prohibition on overland supersonic flight, establish an interim noise-based certification standard, and repeal other regulations that hinder supersonic flight.
The order went on to detail numerous other efforts to lift regulations and “reestablish the United States as the undisputed leader in high-speed aviation.”
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The Concorde supersonic jet was once a regular sight at New York's JFK airport, but they've been gone since 2003 due to legal wrangling and economic difficulties. However, they were not allowed to fly over the fruited plains and were limited to transoceanic flights.
The regulation [preventing civilian supersonic flight over the United States] was implemented in 1973 and prohibits civilian flights above the speed of sound over US territory and directly affected the plans of BAC and Aerospatiale, partners in the project of the Concorde, a supersonic passenger plane.
Trump’s order sets a deadline of 18 to 24 months for the FAA to publish a new regulation that creates an acceptable noise certification standard for supersonic aircraft.
The change comes shortly after the Supersonic Aviation Modernization (SAM) Act was introduced in the U.S. Congress by Republican Senator Ted Budd of North Carolina.
It directs the FAA to repeal the supersonic speed limit as long as aircraft don’t produce an audible sonic boom on the ground.
Thank you, President Trump, for unlocking the future of faster and quieter travel.
The biggest beneficiary of this order would appear to be a company called Boom Supersonic, which is developing the Overture:
With capacity for 80 passengers, the four-engine jet will fly at up to Mach 1.7, a lower performance than the Concorde, but achieved in a less expensive way and with less environmental impact.
Boom promises to shorten distances on domestic flights in the United States, but at a lower speed, up to Mach 1.3. The reason is that the company is betting on the Mach Cutoff concept, in which the shock waves generated by the supersonic boom are dissipated before reaching the surface.
How cool would that be, to travel from coast to coast and still have some hours left in the day?
The one burning question remaining, however, is how quickly an Obama-appointed activist judge will jump in with a temporary restraining order because somehow supersonic flight is unconstitutional or something.