First Drive: Bentley’s New Continental GT Speed Is Hybrid, Heavier Than Ever, and Surprisingly NimbleAt its height in the early 1970s, the Concorde was the Champagne-and-caviar incarnation of supersonic travel, and it remained so until noise and emissions restrictions sunsetted the quixotic aircraft in 2003. Two decades after the Concorde’s final flight, Blake Scholl, founder and CEO of, is again extolling the potential of flying faster than the speed of sound.
The engineering challenges of meeting 21st-century regulations for such aircraft are formidable. One industry expert, who asked to remain anonymous, described it as being “like a Rubik’s Cube—you get the yellow side, but then the blue and green go to shit.” Then there’s the most important issue: funding. Boom says it has raised only $600 million so far.
Some are quite outspoken about the chasm between the current reality and a finished aircraft. “This is nothing but a set of interesting concept drawings,” says Richard Aboulafia, a managing director at, of Boom. “I just don’t see anything there, except an effort to attract money. They’ve gotten some, but by aerospace standards it’s an amusingly small amount.”
Scholl acknowledges that fundraising efforts are nowhere near his estimated need of $6 billion to $8 billion to bring Overture to market but pushes back against the naysayers: “We’ve already done things that the experts said we couldn’t do. The technology and supply chain exist. There’s no fundamental new science—every key technology in this airplane has already flown before.”
Even as Boom partners such as United Airlines ramp up marketing efforts around supersonic travel, industry insiders remain aware of its very daunting challenges—though they also acknowledge the allure. “Maybe that’s part of the problem,” Aboulafia says. “It’s so charismatic, it’s going to attract just enough money to linger on for a long time.