Supersonic-Jet Maker Taps Boeing Ex-CEO Condit as Adviser

(Bloomberg) -- Boom Supersonic is leaning on former Boeing Co. Chief Executive Officer Phil Condit as it develops the world’s fastest jetliner and tries to spark a new era of greener, ultraquick travel.

Condit has been named to the startup’s advisory panel, Boom said Friday. The company is competing with several upstarts, including Boeing-backed Aerion Supersonic, to revive superfast travel, which faded when the Anglo-French Concorde jetliner made its final flight in 2003.

Led by former Amazon.com Inc. executive Blake Scholl, Boom aims by mid-decade to roll out the Overture aircraft, which could whisk almost 90 travelers from Paris to Montreal in 3 1/2 hours. The Denver-based company aims to get the sleek, dart-shaped jet certified and flying commercially by 2029. Tim Brown, executive chairman of global design firm Ideo, also was named to Boom’s advisory panel on Friday.

The quest for a modern heir to the Concorde may seem quixotic. The original version, flown by Air France and British Airways, was a commercial dud, and creating an airplane from scratch tends to be rife with delays and cost overruns. But Condit ran Boeing’s last successful development of a so-called clean-sheet plane, helping in the mid-1990s to guide the 777 wide-body jetliner to market without major hiccups.

He began his engineering career at Boeing working on a supersonic jet that was intended to be the American response to the Concorde. The project withered when U.S. lawmakers yanked funding in 1971. Condit went on to lead conventional jetliner programs, like the narrow-body 757.

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.