From Concorde to Boom Supersonic

The history and future of supersonic air transport

The talk will take place in the Concorde Hangar, less than1 min walk from the car park

Speaker: Prof. RICHARD PARKER CBE, FREng, FRAeS

Concorde was a truly unique aircraft. For over 27 years. From January 1976 to November 2003, it allowed a select few civil passengers the experience of flying at up to Mach 2. The 14 Concorde aircraft (7 British Airways, and 7 Air France) clocked up more supersonic flying hours than all the world's military air forces combined. Concorde was severely limited by not being able to fly supersonic over land because of the sonic boom produced. It flew only a limited number of routes, mainly London to Paris to New York, plus a number of other short-lived routes and charters. After a tragic crash taking off from Paris in July 2000, operations were suspended until a cause and a fix could be identified. This was achieved, and Concorde re-entered service, only to be retired for good soon afterwards.

During and since that period, there have been several attempts to produce new civil, supersonic aircraft, both business jets and airliners. The lecture will detail some of these. Only one credible successor to Concord has emerged: Overture, developed by the company Boom Supersonic over the past ten years. It already has 130 orders from major airlines, despite not having been built yet. The speaker is an advisor to Boom and will relate the fascinating story of the aircraft and engine development to date. There was a flight early in 2025 of XB-1, a one-third scale supersonic demonstrator that achieved a top speed of Mach 1.18. On its final run, there was no perceptible boom at ground level. This was the first time a civil company had built and flown a supersonic aircraft since Concorde. It gives us confidence that we could see paying passengers flying supersonic again early in the next decade.

The speaker: Prof. Richard Parker is an independent Special Advisor, working with various companies and institutions in the fields of technology strategy and technology transfer, former director of Research and Technology at Rolls-Royce. He is a consultant to A*STAR, Singapore, Chairman of the Singapore Aerospace Programme and Chairman of the Singapore Low-Carbon Energy Research Programme TC. He is a Distinguished Visitor at the UK National Physical Laboratory.