Big Boom Supersonic Updates

Boom Supersonic has used the 2024 edition of the Farnborough Airshow to present updates about its business.

The associated updates align with the company’s ambition to build the world’s fastest airline in Overture and bring back the supersonic age of air travel.

Despite several announcements involving the flight deck and engines, there were no updates regarding the timeframe for true progression.

Boom Supersonic hoped to see its Overture enter service by the decade’s end. However, this will not be possible based solely on recent announcements and timeframes.

Flight Deck For Overture Revealed

As part of the first announcement, Boom revealed an all-new flight deck, reinventing what it means to be inside an aircraft cockpit.

The Overture flight deck builds on what has been proven and successful across aircraft over recent history while incorporating next-gen technology.

Boom Supersonic says the features are based on studies from airlines, businesses, and military pilots who contributed to the project to create the best possible flight deck.

Some features include large 17-inch touchscreens, eliminating the buttons that span right across legacy cockpits. Boom highlights that every Overture function will be accessible through software.

This element has raised concerns about relying solely on technology and software for something so critical. However, Boom says this will be secure. The software will be home to many functions, but there’ll be physical controls for the more safety-prone features such as the stick, throttle and landing gear.

Overture will continue to receive new features through the described over-the-air upgrades to improve the experience continuously. Airlines will be able to control how upgrades are rolled out.

The flight deck will also have advanced augmented reality vision systems that will be implemented for takeoff and landing. This crucial element of the aircraft eliminates the need for the drooping nose seen on Concorde.

Pilots will thus be able to land safely using the autoland or augmented reality view provided on a head-worn device and the primary flight display.

Advancements For Engine

Symphony, the engine slated to power Overture, has also continued advancements involving hardware testing, with the engine core to be operational in 18 months.

Boom has previously revealed that it is building a rig to test Sumphony hardware with full-scale tests and combuster aerodynamics.

The company says it believes in rapidly developing approaches and implementing strategies to get endeavours off the ground as it works towards achieving its full objectives.

The accelerated development of the full-scale engine core will be operational in late 2025, with important data to be gathered to refine the overall engineering and production of the full-scale engine to obtain certification.