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United Airlines has bought 15 planes capable of travelling faster than the speed of sound, marking the return of commercial supersonic travel 18 years after Concorde’s final flight.

United says the planes, bought from startup Boom for $200m each, go at speeds twice as fast as a typical flight (Vox). 

That means a flight from San Francisco to Tokyo would take just six hours.

The first flight is scheduled for 2026, with plans to carry passengers by 2029.

United and Boom promise the flights will be “net-zero carbon from day one”, relying completely on sustainable aviation fuel repurposed from waste or organic sources.

Aviation history professor Janet Bednarek warns cost may prove an issue, as well as noise pollution from supersonic booms.

“It’s going to prove to be a lot more challenging than some of the celebratory advertising that’s coming out right now would seem to suggest,” she said.

It comes as a UK company plans to bring back voyages by blimp as another low-carbon means of air travel (Clean Technica). 

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