Returning to Supersonic: One Company’s Plan to Go Back to the Future
Photo Credit: A rendering photo of Aerion's planned AS2 supersonic jet. Aerion
Skift Take
Competition is heating up for supersonic travel and Aerion has established an interesting team to speed up high-end business travel. If it works, the glamour of high-speed crossings will finally return, and the world will open up a bit more.
On Experience
Colin Nagy is a marketing strategist and writes on customer-centric experiences and innovation across the luxury sector, hotels, aviation, and beyond. You can read all of his writing here.
There are few realms where the world has actively regressed. But the demise of the Concorde saw air travel step back in significant ways. It was a pioneer in commercial flight that also made the world feel smaller. But it had its drawbacks: mechanical problems, operational cost, the need for lots of fuel, as well as the ticket price. But it was an incredible glimpse at the future that vanished from the tarmac forever.
As carriers today work on their route strategies, the traveling public is in awe of the range of the new ultra long haul flights. Newark to Singapore, Doha to Auckland. But the limits of the human body (and human attention span) are tested with these types of experiences that are reaching around 19 or 20 hours in a compressed tube. No matter how luxurious it may be, it is brutal.
The commodity that matters to people is time. Getting back and forth from that meeting, getting from point to point as efficiently as possible.
Aerion, the latest entrant into the new r
