Supersonic Deviations: Assessment of Sonic-Boom-Restricted Flight Routing

Abstract

Overland supersonic flight bans due to the sonic boom are often said to be the reason for civil high-speed aircraft not being able to make a breakthrough. However, there is an apparent lack of studies actually quantifying the disadvantage of law-compliant supersonic flight paths versus optimum overland tracks. This paper presents a framework of city pair-specific flight routes and mission-performance simulation for accurate operational assessment of supersonic airplane designs. By application to a supposedly realistic representation of a future civil supersonic air transportation system as a use case, the impact of rerouting on flight distance, block times, and block fuels is quantified locally as well as globally. It was found that, for most of the city pairs relevant for high-value airline service, supersonic rerouting requires only small tradeoffs manifesting in detours and subsonic overland segments. Accordingly, on many itineraries, flight durations in scenarios of overland restriction were calculated to be similar to those encountered in unrestricted legal environments.