Bombardier CEO Éric Martel says supersonic private jets are too expensive to certify and too niche to pursue. The Global 8000, at Mach 0.95, is fast enough.
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Bombardier's CEO said the company sees no business case for supersonic private jets, calling the market a niche and the certification costs prohibitive.
Éric Martel spoke at the Farnborough Airshow last week, where the Global 8000 made its airshow debut. The $78 million jet entered service in December and is the fastest civil aircraft since Concorde, with a top speed of Mach 0.95. On its flight from Los Angeles to Farnborough, it set a speed record of 8 hours 46 minutes, beating a typical commercial jet's 10-hour trip.
Concorde, by contrast, cruised at Mach 2, connecting New York and London in under four hours. Martel said Bombardier has no plans to chase that speed.
"Flying supersonic would be a bit of a niche," Martel told Business Insider. "It would be very expensive for certification – it's another level."
Chief engineer Stephen McCullough, who has worked at Bombardier for 37 years, laid out the technical hurdles. Going beyond Mach 1 requires a lot of thrust to overcome drag and heat, he said. Bombardier had to prove the Global 8000 could withstand the structural loads of supersonic flight, using a NASA F-18 to follow the test aircraft.
McCullough pointed to the compromises Concorde made. Four Rolls-Royce Olympus engines with afterburners drank huge amounts of fuel. The delta-wing design forced a steep angle of attack on takeoff and landing, which is why the nose drooped. "The economic feasibility of it, and just the level of compromise to go at that speed, you sort of suffer for the day-to-day part of it all," he said.
Boom Supersonic, a startup building an airliner aimed at Mach 1.7, faces its own challenges. After Rolls-Royce pulled out of a contract to supply engines, Boom decided to build its own, called Symphony. "People called us crazy for building our own engines, what I've come to believe is we were crazy to think of doing it any other way," CEO Blake Scholl told Business Insider in January. The company's scaled-down test aircraft broke the sound barrier last year, and President Donald Trump signed an executive order lifting the ban on supersonic civil aircraft over land. Bombardier's engineers remain skeptical that the market is large enough to justify the investment.
Instead, Bombardier focuses on making the Global 8000 as comfortable as possible. McCullough said customers want "very good" galleys, high-speed internet, quiet cabins, and a bedroom in the back. The jet has the lowest cabin altitude of any private jet, reducing jet lag and dehydration. At 41,000 feet, passengers feel like they are at 2,691 feet, compared to about 6,000 feet on the newest airliners like the Boeing 787 or Airbus A350.
The Global 8000's name comes from its 8,000 nautical-mile range, enough to fly nonstop for 17 hours.
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