Supersonic Flight

Is Supersonic Passenger Flight About to Return — and What Engineering Must Deliver? Concorde made its final commercial flight on 24th October 2003. For over twenty years, the fastest passenger aircraft in service have cruised at Mach 0.85 — broadly the same speed as the Boeing 707 of the 1960s. However, the conditions that grounded […]

How Is NASA Engineering the Proof That Quiet Supersonic Flight Is Possible? The NASA X-59 Programme is not simply an experimental aircraft. It is the engineering instrument through which supersonic commercial aviation over land may finally become legal — after more than half a century of prohibition. As covered in our article on sonic boom

Why Has One Physics Problem Grounded Supersonic Flight Over Land for 50 Years? The sonic boom is not a flaw in supersonic aircraft design. It is a fundamental consequence of physics — an unavoidable byproduct of any object moving through air faster than sound. However, the intensity of that boom, the shape of the pressure

How Do Military Aircraft Achieve Speeds That No Commercial Airliner Can Match? Military supersonic flight operates in a fundamentally different engineering world from commercial aviation. Where Concorde was constrained by passenger comfort, economics and noise regulations, military aircraft face a different set of demands entirely — speed, survivability, stealth and sustained performance in the most

Why Was Concorde the Most Ambitious Commercial Engineering Programme Ever Attempted? In January 1976, British Airways and Air France simultaneously launched the world’s first commercial supersonic passenger service. One aircraft departed London Heathrow for Bahrain. Another left Paris Charles de Gaulle for Dakar. Both flew at twice the speed of sound. Both carried fare-paying passengers

What Happens to an Aircraft When It Breaks the Sound Barrier? Few engineering challenges have captured the human imagination as completely as supersonic flight. The idea of travelling faster than sound — faster than the noise an aircraft makes — seems almost contradictory. Yet it is not only possible. It has been routine in military