Slow Going for Next Supersonic Jet

July 17, 2002 -- When it comes to air travel, many consider the supersonic Concorde to be the Ferrari of airplanes. Although it was introduced into commercial service nearly 30 years ago, it's still the only passenger plane to travel at twice the speed of sound.

But despite its unparalleled ability to zip travelers through the air faster than any other passenger plane, some aviation experts consider the infamous aircraft to be no better than a 30-year old sport utility vehicle (SUV).

"They guzzle fuel, they're noisy, they threaten the upper atmosphere [with polluting emissions], and they're expensive," says Alan Bender, professor of aeronautical science at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla.

And like SUVs, the high-performance planes have been marred lately with technical problems.

Last Monday, a British Airways Concorde was forced to return to Heathrow Airport outside of London after it developed engine problems 90 minutes into its supersonic flight to New York. Richard Goodfellow, a spokesman for the airline, says the flight did not have to declare an emergency landing nor were any of its passengers or crew in any danger during the flight back.

Goodfellow also says that the airline's engineers are investigating the cause of the "minor technical problem" but it hasn't stopped or affected its daily transcontinental supersonic flights.

Supersonic Stall

Still, industry experts say that such ongoing problems are not only dulling the Concorde's once-chic luster, but it could mark the beginning of the end for supersonic travel.

Already, some aviation analysts note that many of the major airplane makers have put off any research and development of next-generation supersonic transports.

"During the '90s there was a lot of interest in developing the successor to the Concorde," says Paul Jackson, an aviation analyst with Jane's Information Group, publisher of Jane's All the World's Aircraft. But 10 years later, he says much of that interest has produced nothing more than beautifully drawn artists' conceptions.

Many companies have pulled out of the race for high-speed passenger planes because of the sheer technical difficulties in producing an efficient design that can travel faster than Mach 2 — or twice the speed of sound.

Difficult Research

One of the main technical challenges, for instance, is to mitigate or eliminate the "sonic booms" normally associated with supersonic travel. When planes push through the air at faster than sound speeds, the pressure in front of the plane can create shock waves powerful enough to shatter the windows of buildings on the ground below. (Such sonic boom hazards are why the Concorde has been limited to supersonic flights over vast empty oceans rather than along more popular air routes over land.)

Analysts and researchers are confident that such technical challenges can be overcome — but only at great financial cost and risk for plane developers. And even those that have invested heavily — such as the Japanese — may not have much to show for their research efforts.

The National Aerospace Laboratory of Japan (NAL) has pumped millions of dollars into its National Experimental Supersonic Transport (NEXST) plane, a possible successor to the Concorde.

Last week, NAL had hoped a test flight of a scale model of the NEXST would yield clues to building a Mach 2 capable plane that would carry more passengers yet produce less noise than the current Concorde.

But the model was destroyed when a rocket designed to boost the model into the air inexplicably exploded shortly after being launched at a test site in southern Australia. And according to NEXST project leaders, the loss of the model will most likely delay the fuller flight tests that would have been conducted later this year.

The Slow(er) Approach?

Other companies, such as Boeing, have taken a more conservative approach in hopes of avoiding the tricky high-speed research quandary.

Rather than develop a supersonic design, Boeing has recently been pushing a so-called "transonic plane." Its confusingly named "Sonic Cruiser" concept plane is designed to carry about 200 to 250 passengers at close to — about 95 to 98 percent of — the speed of sound.

The company says this would allow airlines to shave about 15 to 20 percent off flight times over conventional jet aircraft. What's more, since the plane isn't designed to go faster than Mach-speed, it avoids the thorny sonic boom and other technical complications. And that makes the plane perfectly suited to deliver faster service on popular overland routes — say between New York and Los Angeles — where supersonic planes can't currently operate.

Tough Sell

Such nearly supersonic planes could be easier and cheaper to develop than a true Concorde replacement. But industry analysts say that Boeing would still have to convince airliners to buy hundreds of the planes in order to recoup development costs.

And that may be a tough sell since the airline industry has seen drastic drops in passengers — specifically business travelers that make up the bulk of the industry's revenues — after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

John Nance, an aviation consultant for ABCNEWS, says that by his calculations, the air travel industry lost about 7 percent of the business travelers after the terrorist attacks. "A hideous amount of capital went out the door," he says.

Blame the Economy

And Nance says that the economic downturn has caused many companies to rethink the value and need to send executives on costly flights. Instead, he believes they're turning to other cost-efficient means of conducting business meetings — namely teleconferencing.

"A busy executive is simply trying to get his work done," says Nance. "And the road warriors that are the backbone of business aviation, these folks are jumping at the opportunity to not be on a plane, but on the phone."

And analysts note that the airline industry's remaining customers — vacationers and other casual, non-business travelers — just aren't demanding faster and pricier travel to their destinations.

"The majority of travelers are those going on holiday," says Jane's Jackson. "And the majority of them are saying, 'Hell, give me a ticket at a quarter of the price and I'll put up with sitting in a cramped seat for another few hours.'"