News: American Airlines Announces Agreement to Purchase Boom Supersonic Overture Aircraft, Places Deposit on 20 Overture

[FlyTexas]

If this aircraft ever enters service with American Airlines I will personally travel to Norfolk and mow Paul K's lawn.

https://news.aa.com/news/news-details/2 ... oom_Alerts

Brian

[Paul K]

If this aircraft ever enters service with American Airlines I will personally travel to Norfolk and mow Paul K's lawn.

You'll be busy every two weeks then . Will Southworst Airlines be going Boom ?

[FlyTexas]

If this aircraft ever enters service with American Airlines I will personally travel to Norfolk and mow Paul K's lawn.

You'll be busy every two weeks then . Will Southworst Airlines be going Boom ?

Every two weeks sounds better than my every week. Regarding Southworst flying the Boom aircraft...not a chance. Of course that's just my opinion. I can't imagine us straying away from our single type fleet anytime soon.

Brian

[airboatr]

the green goal is to not use fossil fuels by 2035.
Maybe they can retrofit electric engines and a battery..
.

[Chris Trott]

I think it's interesting that both United and American have bought in on this. There's been other projects in the past, but none gotten actual full buy-in. I think this is the best indication that the airlines actually think there might be a business case for these airplanes. We'll see.

[FlyTexas]

I think it's interesting that both United and American have bought in on this.

That's for sure. I wonder how much money UA and AA have invested in this enterprise? Coming off of the Covid pandemic, I can't imagine any major airline that has loads of spare cash to invest in this aircraft. I wish Boom much success, but I feel very confident that I'll never find myself mowing Paul K's lawn.

Brian

[Chris Trott]

I think it's interesting that both United and American have bought in on this.

That's for sure. I wonder how much money UA and AA have invested in this enterprise? Coming off of the Covid pandemic, I can't imagine any major airline that has loads of spare cash to invest in this aircraft. I wish Boom much success, but I feel very confident that I'll never find myself mowing Paul K's lawn.

Brian

The confirmed deposit amount is $20mil per, so with each having put down firm deposits on 20 apiece, that's $800mil. As for where the money comes from - most of the big airlines are pretty savvy and keep around pretty deep cash reserves, but I also suspect a good portion of this money is funds that they've been saving for fleet renewal anyway. All the majors are needing to make pretty big decisions about their future fleet plans here in the next 5 years, so I suspect we'll continue to see airlines being able to put fairly substantial sums of money into projects and programmes since they need to get new planes coming in.

[FlyTexas]

Thanks for the info Chris!

Brian

[blanston12]

I just read that Rolls-Royce has decided not to build the engine that Boom was planning to use on the Overture. So if the project is to continue the will need to find another engine maker who can design and build them a suitable engine, in three years if they are going to make there projected time table.

https://www.aviacionline.com/2022/09/th ... velopment/

[AllanL]

Don't panic Joe, after all it all went so well the last time round

I once managed to persuade my wife that we should pass some time at the Udvar Hazy Museum before leaving Washington Dulles for home. As we wandered round there was a guide talking to a tour that we kept bumping into. A boy in the tour interrupted the guide when he was talking about the Concorde on display asking, "Did we build a supersonic airliner?" As the guide had heard us talking he gave me a sideways glance as he said, "Well no, just the Europeans, but Boeing started to build one......" I moved off not wanting to cause any continuing embarrassment.

From memory the Boeing project cost as much as Concorde but never got past a mock-up that I believe is in another museum. But it would have been bigger and presumably noisy too.

Odd side point, my daughter has just flown through Abu Dhabi where I saw a Concorde sitting on the apron 45 years ago as I passed through on my way to Oz for a holiday. It was conducting trials for flights to Singapore and points East that never came to fruition.

Apart from Z list celebrities and even Zer politicians, is there really a market for people to spend vast amounts to get anywhere faster than sub-sonic jets in this Zoom/Teams/Whatsapp infested world?

The fuel cost will always be crippling in comparison to sub-sonic big jets, and noise issues won't go away around airports even if the plane is built in the USA.