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We did XB1 with 50 people, including the engineers that designed it, the technicians that put it together, the test pilots, all of that. And we've also designed a full-scale jet engine. We've designed a full-scale airplane. We have a factory, almost 200,000 square foot factory in North Carolina.
we've consumed about 450. Which makes it, by a large margin, the most efficient supersonic development program in history.
we have the first five years of production in the books.
We call it the three-legged stool. There's the technical execution of the airplane, which in many ways is the easiest part. People have been building supersonic jets for a long time. We just have to build it capitally efficiently. But then there's the what are airlines really going to be able to operate profitably and what are passengers going to pay for. And getting those three things in sync is really important.
United was first to place an order with a deposit. I think, I have an enormous amount of gratitude for the leadership team at United that had the vision to place an order for supersonic jets during COVID. ... United ordered 15 overtures. They pre-ordered another 35. And most important, they're actually working with us on the airplane development.
we are, if we look at technically where the development is, we are a few months ago where the Boeing 777 was five years before it carried passengers.
we will start building the first full-scale airplane next year. And our goal is to have it in the air by the end of 28 and ready for passengers by the end of 29.
Moreover, we can do it without an audible sonic boom.
we've really had supersonic aviation's Falcon 1 moment.
the margins are terrible as well. When you have a competitor that has the exact same product line, the customers get to compete you down to like almost no margin, which is the story of Boeing's commercial business and Airbus's commercial business. Like, they're terrible businesses because there's no product differentiation.
If there was perfect competition, if there are lots of airplane manufacturers, they would have to because they would know that if they didn't do what somebody else would. But there's only two. There's only Boeing and Airbus, right?
Steve Jobs was willing to destroy the iPod business to create the iPhone business, right? Boeing today, many, many, many CEOs removed from the founder, working for the board, being very focused on the next few quarters, is not willing to eat the 787 business to create a much larger supersonic business.
This is why United's doing exactly that.
So if you're Boeing today, you don't want to build an all business class supersonic airplane because it disrupts the bundling of the three class airplanes.
20% of seats at the front of the airplane business class are 80% of the profit dollars. This is why you have fancy wine lists, nice lounges, essentially all of the money on a per trip basis, is premium international travel.
There was hand-wavy economics, right? But it was not at all what, you know, any business-minded person would have built first.
all of that kicks off a vicious cycle. So now there's not enough demand. So then the, you know, one of the economic advantages of supersonic is you can do more flights of the same airplane and crew, but you only realize that benefit if you've constructed the whole thing such that there's enough demand to keep the airplanes full and flying.
Again, this is Econ 101. The higher the price, the smaller the market, right? And so, if you're going to make an airplane where the tickets are going to cost $20,000 and you're designing for 1970s or 80s market size, the airplane needs to be a lot smaller. What Concorde actually did is fly around a lot of empty seats. Even on the best route, which is New York to London, this is the like rock stars and royalty route, right? This is the, if you want to make a premium supersonic product, there is n
So the internet, so prior to me starting Boom, the internet was full of basically false conventional wisdom about supersonic flight. And one of those myths is, oh, it was 9-11 and, you know, one crash that killed Concord. No.
20% of seats at the front of the airplane, business class, are 80% of the profit dollars. This is like the business case for what we're doing if life's working.
United was first to place an order with a deposit. And I think, I have an enormous amount of gratitude for the leadership team at United that had the vision to place an order for supersonic jets during COVID. And it was really Scott Kirby and Mike Leskinen who looked at COVID and said, everyone else is retrenching. This is actually the time to build for the future. And so they made a couple of bold bets. They made a bet on supersonic flight and they made a bet on eVTOL and they were willing to p