Fact: plane travel sucks.
But maybe you’re one Bradley Pitts, flying first-class on Emirates to all corners of the globe. In which case, please do enjoy the sliding door to separate you from the mewling mobs of coach passengers. Or maybe you got lucky with a light load. Or maybe you’re even richer than Pitts, and fly your own plane.
But chances are … you’re stuck in coach with the rest of us schnooks.
That might change with Boom, the supersonic airline backed by Virgin mogul Richard Branson. Take one look at the brand’s renderings and see if your speed-loving heart doesn’t start a-pitter-pattering. The specs are even better: hop a ride on Boom and you’ll get your travel time cut in half (or more). That means L.A. to Sydney will get knocked down from 15 to 6.5 hours, while transatlantic jumps will be cut to around three. If you’re a business traveler, you’ll want to bookmark their webpage.
The benefits won’t stop there for passengers willing to pay around $5K for the U.K.-U.S. trip. As seen in renderings released to the media this week — alongside a subscale prototype shown off to industry execs in Denver — “the aircraft will provide its 45 to 55 passengers with spacious seating on each side of the aircraft’s aisle, along with a personal window and overhead bin,” according to Mashable,
This is all surprisingly close to reality. In response to Branson’s support, Boom will offer his Virgin Group an option to buy Boom’s first 10 airframes. If they get them in the air by late 2017, as planned, it’ll mark aviation’s first foray into supersonic travel since the Concorde was phased out in 2003; just as exciting, several other firms are pursuing supersonic flight, including one that plans to replace windows with video screens.
Brave new world, here we come.
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