Aircraft
Aerion Tests Further Efforts to Develop Supersonic Bizjet
Aerion is continuing to test and develop its supersonic business jet and is seeking a partnership with an OEM.
Aerion is continuing to test and develop its supersonic business jet and is seeking a partnership with an OEM.

Aerion has seen the business aircraft market change substantially since it announced development of a supersonic business jet (SSBJ) design at the 2004 NBAA convention, but the company remains bullish about market demand for such an aircraft, and its plans to bring its design to fruition. Ahead of NBAA ‘12, Aerion (Booth No. 1112) announced a second round of test flights to validate final engineering specs for the aircraft’s tapered bi-convex wing design, which the company states is significantly more efficient than delta-wing configurations like the Concorde. As with an initial round of flights conducted in 2010, the latest round of testing involves mounting an Aerion test article under a NASA F-15B and measuring its flow qualities while operating at speeds up to Mach 2.0.