New wonder planes are being developed which will slash travelling times and be environmentally friendly.
The new planes, unveiled at the recent Paris Air Show, promise that a journey from London to Tokyo would take just two hours, or you could nip over to New York in 90 minutes – shorter than some people’s daily commute. Despite all the new technology, the developers also say the planes won’t be any noisier than the ones we have now.
Before you get too excited, though, there is a catch – the planes are unlikely to be ready to ferry paying passengers around for at least another 40 years.
The new hypersonic passenger jets will use three sets of engines, enabling them to fly at speeds of over 3,000mph, which is four times faster than the speed of sound. The planes are being billed as Concorde’s successor and will be powered by hydrogen and oxygen, meaning that water will be the only emission.
Jean Botti, innovation and technology director at Airbus’s parent company EADS, which is developing the plane, said, “It is not a Concorde but it looks like a Concorde, showing that aerodynamics of the 1960s were already very smart.”
Botti added, “We’ve been working on this project for long enough now to know it is viable.”
