The past couple of years have not been the best of times for a would-be developer to sign deals with industrial partners and customer-users for a new supersonic business jet (SSBJ), but Aerion has been hanging in there and is now seeking to make subsonic aircraft aerodynamically slicker.
“As a result of our discussions with potential OEM partners over the SSBJ, a number of OEMs have raised interest in applying natural laminar flow NLF] technology to subsonic aircraft,” Aerion vice chairman Brian Barents told AIN. “Our Aerion SSBJ design has two sweet spots–one at Mach 0.96 to 0.97 and the other at Mach 1.5. There is a lot of interest in subsonic efficiency gains, and this might be a good avenue for us to pursue and establish relationships with OEMs.” To this end, Aerion has formed Aerion Technologies and “we will pursue this in parallel with further development of the SSBJ,” said Barents.
