For decades, Americans have accepted long coast-to-coast flights as a fact of life. A trip from New York to Los Angeles typically consumes most of a day, while international travel often requires even greater patience. That reality may soon change if federal regulators move forward with plans that could usher in a new era of commercial aviation.
The Federal Aviation Administration is advancing efforts to modernize regulations governing supersonic travel, opening the door to aircraft capable of dramatically reducing travel times across the United States.
The initiative follows growing confidence among aerospace engineers that new technologies can solve the problem that doomed earlier generations of supersonic passenger flight: the disruptive sonic boom.
