The business jet trying to catch up to Concorde

The Bombardier Global 8000 offers a time saving for those who need it most, says Simon Calder - but does it rival the supersonic plane that revolutionised aviation 50 years ago?

- 

"Concorde was all first class, so you were treated in a great way," says Larry Mueller - former boss of IBM Europe and now chief executive of the ultra-high-end travel company Cuvee. "But for me, it was really about the convenience of leaving Paris and getting to New York in three and a half hours - and picking up two hours of time."

The Anglo-French supersonic jet, which first flew paying passengers 50 years ago this month, was seemingly able to transcend the rules of the cosmos. The evening westbound flight outpaced the spinning of the globe, so the sun appeared to rise in the west. Mr Mueller could take off from Paris and touch down at JFK airport two hours before he had left, local time.

From London, the saving was “only” an hour. But Concorde was a time machine.

As I have been reporting this month, a Denver-based company named Boom Supersonic hopes its commercial passenger jet, named Overture, will be breaking the sound barrier with passengers on board by the end of the decade.

In contrast, the former chief Concorde pilot for British Airways, Captain Jock Lowe, reckons it will be 2050 before anyone can buy a ticket for a supersonic plane. Yet a business jet that has just been certified by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency claims to be the natural successor to Concorde.

Bombardier, the Canadian company that makes the Global 8000 aircraft, calls it “the fastest business jet ever conceived” and “the fastest civil aircraft since the Concorde”.