The Company That Wants To Bring Back Supersonic Jet Travel

SPEAKER_2 (0:02)

Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

Joe Weisenthal (0:18)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:23)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:24)

Tracy, I have to say, if I had any friend who I would have guessed would have ever been on a Concorde, it would have been you.

Tracy Alloway (0:30)

Oh, is that a nice thing for me to say?

Joe Weisenthal (0:33)

Yeah, you're international, you've been all around the world, sophisticated traveler. I would have guessed that maybe at some point when it still flew, that maybe you would have flown aboard the Concorde jet.

Tracy Alloway (0:44)

I mean, I would have been in middle school or high school flying on the Concorde, which would have been quite an experience, I imagine. Let's see. So it stopped flying in the early 2000s, right?

Joe Weisenthal (0:55)

I guess that was a long time ago.

Tracy Alloway (0:56)

Yeah. But of course, it has this massive legacy. And when people think of the Concorde, they think of luxury air travel and I guess advanced technology too. And it's kind of crazy to think that this plane, a supersonic plane started flying in, I think it was the 60s or the 70s. And now, 50 years later, we don't have any supersonic air travel, commercially at least. I know there's supersonic fighter jets and things like that. Like, is that weird?

Joe Weisenthal (1:25)

Well, it's weird. It's depressing too, because I think when I think of like civil aviation in general, not only do I think, we haven't really made much progress, like we're not at the cutting edge. We're like going backwards, right? Because, okay, like we're currently not building any supersonic jets or flying them. Our capacity, if you just think about the US and you think about Boeing, it seems to have gotten worse over time. So it's not just that Boeing hasn't launched new planes in a long time, its ability to produce the existing planes seems to have been degraded. So this is one area where like, it's not even lack of progress, it's like literally going in reverse.

Tracy Alloway (2:03)

Also, every once in a while, one of the budget carriers in Europe especially will threaten to have like stand up seating on one of their planes. It really does feel like we're regressing.

Joe Weisenthal (2:15)

By the way, hot take. I think for short flights, I would be okay with the standups.

Tracy Alloway (2:20)

No.

Joe Weisenthal (2:20)

Yeah, seriously. I stand up on the bus for a long time. I stand up on the train. I could do it.

Tracy Alloway (2:24)

For like an hour?

Joe Weisenthal (2:26)

Yeah, I have actually. But anyway, without digressing too much. So we talk about manufacturing, we actually talk about aerospace a fair amount. But we should talk more about the people actually building actual things or at least aspiring to actual build things in the United States. And what are the barriers and why does it seem so hard?

Tracy Alloway (2:46)

Let's do it, especially for something like supersonic flight, which was challenging at the best of times. I think that's a fair way to describe it. So I'm excited to dig into this.

Joe Weisenthal (2:56)

Totally. So in early June, the White House instructed the FAA to lift its ban on flying supersonic jets over the United States. I don't think the ban has been lifted yet, but it's been instructed to. And then the question is anyone, are there actually going to be new supersonic jets? Will this actually matter? Cause right now none are flying. Anyway, there are companies that are trying. And one of the companies that is trying to build a commercial supersonic jet is Boom Supersonic. And I'm thrilled to say we have its founder and CEO, Blake Scholl on the podcast. They're actually trying to build a supersonic jet. That's crazy. Welcome to the podcast, Blake.

Blake Scholl (3:31)

Hey, Joe. Hey, Tracy. Thank you for having me.

Joe Weisenthal (3:33)

You think you can actually build a supersonic jet company in America in the 2020s?

Blake Scholl (3:39)

It seems like the answer is yes.

We've built and flown the, actually, the first ever civil supersonic jet made in America. We became the first private company ever to build and fly a supersonic jet. United Airlines, American Airlines, Japan Airlines have signed up for the airplanes. We've got a factory in North Carolina. There's still a lot of work left to do, but every day that goes by, we've got less excuses for failure.

Tracy Alloway (4:04)

I have a question which is, I don't mean this to sound insulting, but shouldn't you be an airline rather than an aerospace manufacturer? The reason I ask that is because Concorde famously developed by Aerospécial and British Aerospace and they never made money on it. They never recoup their development costs, but BA and Air France, I think those were the major airlines flying it at the time. They made some money in certain years. What exactly makes you confident that this is going to be a profitable enterprise for you?