Last week’s poll: supersonic passenger aircraft

Commercial supersonic flight is making a comeback with the 12-passenger capacity Aerion AS2 business jet powered by GE Aviation’s new Affinity engine.

GE predicts the power plant will exceed the regulations demanded for noise in supersonic transition and will have good fuel economy too.

However, question marks still exist over whether there is enough commercial demand for supersonic flight to make services a reality, prompting us to ask whether engineer readers think that flying above the speed of sound is still alluring enough for airlines to invest large amounts in these new aircraft.

According to 41 per cent of respondents, supersonic flight can be profitable, followed by a quarter of the vote that said it would be too expensive to be profitable. A fifth of respondents agreed that supersonic flight would be too polluting and detrimental to the environment, followed by nine per cent who think teleconferencing has rendered business travel obsolete. The remaining five per cent opted for none of the above.