Boeing has revealed a plan to produce a hypersonic passenger plane that travel around the globe within few hours. It also could travel between London and New York in just two hours, instead of the eight hours usually required for this trip.
The concept shows a Concorde-like design which was retired in 2003, and would be capable of crossing the Indian Ocean in 3 hours only, the Daily Mail reported.
The company said in a report during the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics conference in Atlanta this week that the new aircraft will reduce the duration of the flight between Europe and Australia to five hours.
The plane will fly at a speed of 4,000 miles (6437 km) per hour, about 5 times faster than the speed of sound. The company hopes to manufacture this new plane within the next 20 to 30 years. Boeing said it is betting on this hypersonic plane to make travel easier in the future, depending on the developments of technology worldwide.
British Airways and Air France have suspended their Concorde fleet 14 years ago. Since then, commercial flights’ speed didn’t exceed the speed of the sound. Fourteen airplane of the fleet had transported first class passengers from New York to London at 2,177.44 Kilometers per hour - about twice the speed of the sound - and in only 3.5 hours, half the time required for the regular flights across the Atlantic.
The high cost element hinders the revival of the hypersonic travel sector. Each trip requires 4 times the amount of fuel a Boeing 747 needs per passenger, and the tickets’ prices may hit $12,000. Moreover, the number of passengers on these flights significantly dropped after the crash of a Concorde plane that belonged to Air France in Paris and the death of all its passengers.
