On Thursday January 24th, Boom Supersonic kicked off construction of its Overture Superfactory in Greensboro, North Carolina. Boom Supersonic is the company with plans to build the world’s fastest airliner. The Overture Superfactory is a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility located on a 62-acre campus at the Piedmont Triad International Airport. This site will house the final assembly line, as well as test facility, and customer delivery center for Boom’s flagship supersonic airliner, Overture.
Boom Supersonic has stated that its supersonic aircraft will be able to cover routes such as New York and the United Kingdom in 3.5 hours, Los Angeles and Sydney in 8 hours or San Francisco and Tokyo in 6 hours. According to the company, the plane would double the speed of current flights and would have a capacity of between 65 and 88 people. The company’s CEO, Blake Scholl, told CNN that “we either fail or we change the world. Time barrier is what keeps us apart.”
We see ourselves as picking up where Concorde left off and fixing the most important things which are economic and environmental sustainability.
Blake Scholl, Boom Supersonic CEO
One of the reasons one of the only two commercial supersonic aircraft, Concorde, failed was because of its high costs. Scholl hopes Overture tickets can be similar to business class and much lower than Concorde, which charged about $12,000 for a round-trip ticket.
Scholl says that those sky-high prices were not travel rather but something “you could expect to do once in a lifetime.” According to him, the company will aim to offer four-hour flights and $100 fares as a long-term goal. He added that it’s important to contemplate the evolution of aeronautical technology that has “gone from aluminum to carbon fiber, from paper drafting and slide rules and wind tunnels to being able to optimize airplanes for computer simulation.”
By 2032, Boom will hire more than 2,400 workers at the Superfactory, and recruiting is already underway. North Carolina economists estimate that the full Boom manufacturing program will grow the state’s economy by at least $32.3 billion over 20 years.
In addition to Boom’s job creation in the state, the company is creating over 200 internships for students in North Carolina public universities, community colleges, and trade schools to build the next generation of supersonic workers.
Boom selected North Carolina as the site for Overture aircraft manufacturing because of its large skilled talent pool, access to exceptional universities, community colleges, and technical schools, proximity to the Eastern Seaboard for supersonic flight testing over water and close proximity to several top-tier aerospace suppliers. North Carolina’s aerospace manufacturing sector has grown three-times faster than the national average over the past few years.
Throughout this year, Boom will focus on construction of the Overture Superfactory with BE&K Building Group and their design partner, BRPH. The building will be LEED certified in keeping with Boom’s commitment to environmental sustainability. In 2024, Boom will install tooling, provided by Advanced Integration Technology (AIT), ahead of moving into the building and preparing the facility and staff for Overture production launch the same year.
