Boom Supersonic is making a major announcement at Piedmont Triad International Airport (PTIA) at 1 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 26.
The notification states, “Boom Supersonic will celebrate an Overture milestone.”
Overture is the supersonic passenger jet that Boom is developing.
An indication that the announcement is major is that North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper and President Pro Tem of the state Senate Sen. Phil Berger (R-Rockingham) will both be present. Cooper and Berger are the two most powerful elected officials in the state.
But otherwise the information on what milestone is being celebrated is scanty.
The last major announcement from Boom was on Dec. 13, 2022, when it announced that Florida Turbine Technologies would be developing the engines for the Overture along with StandardAero and GE Additive. When Boom announced it would be building its $500 million aircraft manufacturing facility at PTIA, Rolls Royce was listed as the developer and manufacturer of the jet engines.
In September 2022, Rolls Royce announced that it was no longer collaborating with Boom on the supersonic jet engines for Overture and Boom said it would have a new manufacturer by the end of the year.
It was Jan. 26, 2022 when Boom officially announced that it had chosen PTIA as the home for its manufacturing facility. Both Cooper and Berger as well as a host of other state and local dignitaries were on hand to welcome Boom to Greensboro.
At that announcement Cooper said that Boom would create 1,761 new jobs and hundreds more on top of that in the supply chain. Cooper estimated that Boom would have an economic impact of $32.3 billion on the region over the next 20 years.
While both Greensboro and Guilford County approved economic incentives for Boom, the big money came from the state in the form of a Job Development Investment Grant from the North Carolina Department of Commerce and Economic Investment Committee of $106.7 million.
I must be too cynical, but giving away $107 million to a start-up that claims it can manufacture cutting edge airliners seems unwise. I mean, it’s not Boeing or Lockheed, is it?
They’re very good at making pretty pictures of a modified British aircraft from 50 years ago though…, (Concorde).