Virgin goes supersonic

Virgin Australia boss John Borghetti has announced the time is now for future airline development.

In an address given at the Sir Reginald Ansett memorial lecture at the Safeskies conference in Canberra, Borghetti spoke about the likelihood of flying from Sydney to Los Angeles in seven hours.

According to The Australian, Borghetti touted the “extroadinary” progress the industry was making towards supersonic passenger planes.

Yes, you read that right, supersonic planes.

Now as much as we would like to associate supersonic planes with 80s daytime television – think The Jetsons or Star Trek – as it turns out they aren’t all that far away according to Borghetti.

“It is entirely reasonable to believe that in the next 10 years we will see supersonic jets safely and sustainably flying commercial passengers,” he said.

Per The Oz, the Virgin boss pointed to the work of Denver-based Boom, which hopes to revive supersonic air travel by developing aircraft that could fly at 2335km/h.

The result would mean passengers could wave goodbye to the brutal 13-hour commute between Sydney and Los Angeles once and for all.

“This isn’t a far-off dream,” Mr Borghetti said, adding there has been “a lot” of focus this year on how far planes could go non-stop.

“However, I believe in order to achieve the next step-change in aviation, we need to shift the paradigm,” he said.

“We should not be asking ‘How far, but rather How fast?”

A similar announcement came out of the UK in March of last year, when aviation start-up Boom signed an agreement with Richard Branson’s Virgin Group.

Under the deal, Virgin’s manufacturing arm The Spaceship Company would help with the engineering, design and manufacturing of the aircraft which will travel at Mach 2.2. The majority of modern passenger aircraft fly at Mach 0.85.

Boom’s idea was to take passengers from New York to London in just three hours and 20 minutes.

The first prototype was expected to fly this year, however there has been no news as of yet about its launch.

At the time, Boom boss Blake Scholl told The Guardian, “This is supersonic passenger air travel, no bullshit, and it’s actually affordable”, confirming the round-trip at $5,000.

“Ultimately I want people to be able to get anywhere in the world in five hours for $100.

“To get there you have to improve fuel efficiency, but step-by-step supersonic air travel will become available for everyone.”

Stay tuned for more supersonic travel news.

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