Japan Airlines (JAL) has invested as much as $10 million in the Denver-based aerospace company Boom Supersonic.
It plans to resurrect the process of travel. In exchange for their funding JAL would also be capable of pre-ordering 20 of the new aircraft. Yoshikawa Ueki who is the president of the airline mentioned in a press release from 5th December that with the aid of this partnership they would hope to contribute to the future of supersonic flight with the intention of offering more time to their valued passengers while emphasizing flight safety.
It has been 14 years since British Airways and Air France had grounded their Concorde fleets.
Commercial air travel has not hit supersonic speeds ever since. Fourteen of these airplanes had ferried first-class passengers from New York to London at speeds of 1,353 mph that is twice the speed of sound. That is nearly half the time it takes for a normal passenger plane to cross the Atlantic Ocean.
But the supersonic travel sector was adversely impacted by prohibitive costs.
It required four times as much fuel per passenger as a Boeing 747 airbus. But then the average cost of a round-trip ticket was $12,000. Passenger numbers also declined dramatically following the fiery crash of Air France Flight 4590 in Paris that killed everyone on board.
Blake Scholl who is the founder and CEO of Boom Supersonic said in the press release that they had been working with Japan Airlines behind the scenes for more than a year now. And he also asserted that the companies had been joining hands to upgrade the plane’s design for passengers.
JAL is only one of the financial backers of Boom.
In the year 2016, Richard Branson, the British billionaire and founder of the Virgin Group had agreed to purchase the first 10 of these jets. He also promised that Virgin Galactic, his spaceflight company would be assisting with the flight test support.
JAL plans to use their 20 new jets, seating up to 55 passengers each in order to plan flights between Tokyo and North America.
A standard flight from San Francisco to Tokyo consumes generally about 11 hours while a supersonic jet might make the trip in almost half the time.
