![]() 26, 2022 announcement that the company is coming to Greensboro’s Piedmont Triad International Airport. Roy Cooper receives a model of Boom Supersonic’s Overture jet from Boom’s President and Chief Business Officer, Kathy Savitt, during the Jan. “We have been preparing this airport for projects like these and companies like this for the better part of 10 years,” said Kevin Baker, executive director of the Piedmont Triad Airport Authority. The state also has one of the fastest-growing aerospace sectors in the nation, a military population that largely specializes in propulsion, a top-notch university system that would serve as a pipeline for an educated workforce, and roughly 1,000 acres of land at the Piedmont Triad International Airport set aside for exactly the kind of manufacturing facility Boom needs. Since 2021, North Carolina has attracted at least $17 billion in investments from companies like Apple, Toyota, and electric-car maker VinFast, which won a record-breaking $1.2 billion incentives package from the state in July. It’s part of the state’s bigger play to attract businesses. With its headquarters landlocked in Colorado, Boom needed to build its manufacturing facility closer to the Atlantic, where supersonic flight testing can take place.īoom could have chosen from a handful of locations, but more than $121 million in combined city, county, and state incentives helped North Carolina outcompete contenders like Florida and Georgia. It’s not just North Carolina’s storied aviation history that attracted Boom to the eastern seaboard. More than a century after the Wright Brothers made North Carolina first in aviation, Boom is poised to make it the fastest.īut aviation experts are questioning whether the Overture will-or should-ever take off. And the Denver-based company plans to break ground on its manufacturing “Superfactory” at Greensboro’s Piedmont Triad International Airport in a matter of months, where it will make its flagship jetliner, the Overture. But now a new era of supersonic commercial flights is about to take off.īoom Supersonic promises to put passengers in what the startup’s founder and CEO Blake Scholl has called the “son of the Concorde” by the end of the decade. The Concorde made its final flight in 2003. ![]() ![]() That and the $12,000 ticket price ensured that the Concorde rarely flew more than half full, while burning several times more jet fuel and creating three times more noise, carbon, and nitrogen pollution. British Airways and Air France began shuttling passengers around in 1976, but the aircraft flew limited routes: the Concorde could only reach top speeds over the ocean, where the sonic boom that trailed the planes couldn’t terrorize people on the ground. It took two nations 15 years and $2.8 billion (more than 20 times the initial estimate) to get the Concorde off the ground. While passengers enjoyed bubbly, caviar, and proximity to celebrities, the sleek, luxury aircraft would scream across the sky higher and faster than any other jetliner, delivering its passengers to their destination in half the usual time. ![]() But by the time the aircraft reached full speed over the open ocean, there was little to indicate they’d broken the sound barrier beyond a digital speedometer and the start of champagne service. Not so long ago, anyone with the (considerable) means and the inclination could take a flight across the Atlantic at two times the speed of sound in the world’s first supersonic airliner, the Concorde.Īt takeoff, the Concorde’s afterburners roared, rattling the fuselage, filling the cabin with the faint smell of jet fuel, and pressing passengers into their seat backs.
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