Forget warm meals, smiling flight attendants or the right to check bags for free – the one thing I miss the most in the aviation world is supersonic travel. Sure, Concorde was an insanely expensive way to travel, and the plane had its fair share of technical and environmental issues, but she stood for something very important – the realization that travel by air should be faster.
In this day and age, it is absurd that a coast to coast flight has to take seven hours. With a supersonic flight, you could get on the plane at JFK, and get off in San Francisco a little over two hours later. Or how about flying from Los Angeles to Tokyo in five hours instead of eleven?
I’d even settle for the knowledge that a supersonic plane is under development, but after Concorde was put to rest, so was the chance that we’d see anything remotely like her in the next couple of decades. Every year, an aviation startup hits the news with their plans for a supersonic jet, but their plans usually end up just that – plans. Worst of all, many of the proposed supersonic jets don’t even make it past the snazzy graphics and fake mockup image phase.
For supersonic travel to take off again, Boeing or Airbus will need to be the driving force. Sadly, Boeing stopped development of their Sonic Cruiser back in 2002 and focused their attention on the Dreamliner. So, until one of the major airplane makers gets back to work, we can only think back to the era of Concorde and the realization that we were more ahead of our time in 1969 than we are today.