Boom supersonic jet able to fly London to New York in three hours a step closer to production

A supersonic jet capable of flying passengers from London to New York in three hours and 15 minutes has moved a step closer to reality.

Boom Supersonic has raised $33m (£26m) in Series A funding, enough to build and fly the prototype XB-1.

Nicknamed “Baby Boom”, the test model will be a third of the size of the jets it eventually plans to sell to airlines.

“We have almost all the engineering completed, and the first wing components are showing up in the office this week,” Boom CEO Blake Scholl told TechCrunch.

“We’re about to do structural tests, and then we’re probably about a year away from flight.”

Boom Supersonic claims its final product will be the “world’s fastest civil aircraft ever made”, capable of hitting speeds of 1,451mph, making it 10 per cent faster than Concorde and over twice as fast as other airliners.

XB-1 will fly at around 60,000ft, and Boom Supersonic says it will cut the flight time for journeys between London and New York by more than half.

Unsurprisingly, however, tickets will be extremely expensive, at up to $2,500 one-way, in either direction.

The company has already announced a partnership with Virgin Galactic, and will reveal new customers later this year.

According to the Daily Mail, Boom could be ready to take on passengers as soon as the early 2020s.

“Now we have all the pieces we need – technology, suppliers and capital – to go out and make some history and set some speed records,” added Mr Scholl.