London to New York in less than four hours! All you need to know

Boom Supersonic, a manufacturer of aircraft aiming to commercialise supersonic and ultra-fast flight, will sell up to 20 of its jets to American Airlines. By 2029, overture aircraft from Boom Supersonic are expected to reduce travel time from London to New York to three and a half hours.

Boom's Overture four-engine planes offer top speeds of Mach 1.7 over water, which is twice as fast as the current fastest commercial aircraft, which means the jet can travel from Miami to London in less than five hours as opposed to the typical nine hours.

About a year ago, United Airlines also decided to buy 15 Boom jets, and in 2016, Virgin Atlantic teamed up with Boom to build and test aircraft in an effort to make the formerly pricey flights more accessible.

With the American Airlines contract in hand, Boom now has a 130-plane order to fill, with options—American has the option to buy 40 more of the aircraft—totaling roughly $26 billion, according to Reuters. Boom's Overture planes, which have a capacity of 65 to 80 passengers, are anticipated to begin rolling off the assembly line in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 2025, with test flights following in 2026. Boom anticipates its aircraft carrying its first passengers in 2029, but due to a delay in testing its other aircraft, the XB-1, delivery of the Overture may also be postponed.

Boom's jets are extremely quick, but they can't match the speed of the fabled Concorde, which reached a speed of Mach 2.04. Due to a series of problems with the jets, the Concorde took its final commercial flight in 2003 after making its first supersonic flight in 1976 from New York City to London in three hours.

Boom's Overture will go over land at a speed that is roughly 20 per cent quicker than subsonic aircraft, but less quickly than it will on the more than 600 largely transoceanic routes that it will be most effective on.