Technology | Europe
The Supersonic Comeback Nobody Expected: How Europe's Aerospace Industry Is Reviving Concorde's Dream
European aerospace companies are back in the supersonic race after decades of silence. Here is what they have built, what they have learned from Concorde, and when you might actually fly supersonically.
European aerospace companies are back in the supersonic race after decades of silence. Here is what they have built, what they have learned from Concorde, and when you might actually fly supersonically.
- European aerospace companies are back in the supersonic race after decades of silence.
- The last Concorde flight landed at London Heathrow on October 24, 2003 — a date that aeronautical engineers and aviation enthusiasts mark as the end of supersonic commercial aviation's first era.
- The Concorde's fundamental problem was not speed.
European aerospace companies are back in the supersonic race after decades of silence.
The last Concorde flight landed at London Heathrow on October 24, 2003 — a date that aeronautical engineers and aviation enthusiasts mark as the end of supersonic commercial aviation's first era. Twenty-two years later, European aerospace companies are once again seriously pursuing the technology, and the landscape of what is possible has changed considerably.
The Concorde's fundamental problem was not speed. It was economics. The aircraft burned fuel at a rate that made ticket prices accessible only to a tiny fraction of the traveling public, it generated a sonic boom that restricted it to transatlantic routes where it could cruise supersonically over water, and it required maintenance costs that made profitability essentially impossible at the scale of operations that Air France and British Airways could realistically support.
The new generation of supersonic projects — including European efforts by Dassault (which has extensive supersonic military aircraft heritage), Airbus (which has been studying supersonic concepts internally for years), and several pan-European consortium projects funded partly through EU Horizon programme grants — are addressing all three of these constraints with technology that did not exist in 1976.
Engine efficiency has improved dramatically since the Olympus engines that powered Concorde were designed. Variable cycle engines — which can switch between different operating modes optimized for subsonic and supersonic flight — reduce the fuel consumption penalty of supersonic cruise compared to Concorde's generation of engines. Sonic boom mitigation through airframe shaping has been validated experimentally: NASA and Lockheed Martin have demonstrated 'quiet supersonic' flight profiles that produce a sonic 'thump' rather than a boom, potentially enabling overland supersonic flight if regulatory frameworks are updated.
The commercial model is also different: the new supersonic concepts are not designed for mass market travel but for a tier of business and premium travel that has demonstrated willingness to pay significantly for time savings. London to New York in 3.5 hours instead of 7 commands a price premium that makes the economics work at lower seat factors than Concorde required.