The News & Observer in Raleigh is reporting that the airplane manufacturer Boom Supersonic is negotiating to locate its manufacturing facility at the Piedmont Triad International Airport (PTIA).
The Rhino Times independently confirmed that the site at PTIA was to be used to manufacture supersonic aircraft, but not the name of the company. The N&O reports that it has had Boom Supersonic confirmed by five sources.
According to the Boom webpage, Blake Scholl founded Boom Supersonic in 2014 with the goal of making high-speed air travel mainstream. Scholl held leadership roles at Amazon and Groupon and co-founded Kima Labs before founding Boom.
Boom estimates that its supersonic passenger jet traveling at 1,300 mph will cut the airtime from Tokyo to Seattle from 8 hours and 30 minutes to four hours and 30 minutes and from Paris to Montreal from 7 hours and 15 minutes to three hours and 45 minutes.
United Airlines has already signed a contract to purchase 15 Boom Supersonic aircraft with an option to purchase an additional 35. Boom plans call for it to produce its first aircraft by 2025 with the first passengers in the air in 2029.
On Monday, Nov. 29, the North Carolina Legislature passed a technical corrections bill to the budget, which included an economic incentive in the form of a Job Development Investment Grant (JDIG) grant of $106.7 million for a project at Piedmont Triad International Airport.
The bill states that the grant is for a “high-yield project for an airplane manufacturer in Guilford County and for which the average annual wage is at least sixty-thousand dollars ($60,000).”
The PTIA megasite of almost 1,000 acres, with runway access via a taxiway bridge, has been under development for years.
The bill states that $56.7 million of the grant would be for PTIA to construct one or more new hangars at the airport for the airplane manufacturing project.
Unlike the Concorde, where fares in today’s dollars would be about $13,000, Boom states that its goal is to make high speed air travel affordable with ticket prices projected to be on par with current business class tickets. All the seats on the Boom supersonic aircraft the Overture are business class, with only one seat per row on either side of the center aisle.
Hope the N&O’s (news and disturber) jumping the gun on any announcement does not become a deal breaker for the owner.
This company would be great for Triad.
Good luck to our fine neighbors at the Cardinal with supersonic capable aircraft taking off and landing, batten down things on your shelves and put masking tape on your windows. With one seat either side of the aisle, sounds like it would be like a supersonic Gulfstream jet, and those have to be performance engines which are loud by their nature.
There won’t be any supersonic flights over land. If you noticed all the supersonic routes they promoted in the press releases were trans-Atlantic or Pacific flights. The Boom jet actually makes less noise than a typical passenger jet.
Amazon, Toyota, and Boom. Greensboro seems to be doing well.
We should, it sure cost mucho dinero of our monnaie.
So, is the Boom Supersonic a real deal, or just wishful thinking. The way i have read it nothing has been built yet. It is all developmental and concepts. The real question is will it actually get built? If Boom can get someone to throw money at it sure they will come to Greensboro. If it is such a great idea why haven’t Boeing, or other airplane manufacturers already done this?