An ultra high-speed passenger plane has now been engineered to transport its passengers more than twice as fast as it normally takes to transport them to their destinations.
The supersonic plane is patented by Airbus.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office awarded the patent to the company for an "ultra-rapid air vehicle and related method for aerial locomotion" in July.
While a flight from New York to London normally takes seven to eight hours, Airbus' supersonic plane can cover the same distance in just an hour.
The speed can also reduce the typical 11-hour flight of 9,000 kilometers (approx. 5,600 miles) from San Francisco to Paris, and the usual 10-hour flight from Los Angeles to Tokyo, in three hours.
With this speed, Airbus said the plane will be mainly targeted at the military and business and VIP passengers who require intercontinental flights in just one day.
Deepak Gupta, founder of India-based intellectual property drafting service PatentYogi, observed the supersonic jet and noted the plane hits Mach 4.5. It can travel as fast as 4.5 times the speed of sound.
Gupta, however, also noted that the plane, which can board 20 passengers or two to three tons, wouldn't be flying at its top speed at all times during an entire flight.
The Mach 4.5 plane can reach its top speed, with three sets of engines. First, it has to have turbojets for taxing, takeoff and landing. Second, the plane requires a motor that allows rapid acceleration. Then, completing the combination of engines are ramjets that take the plane to a high altitude when cruising.
When not in use, the turbojets and rocket motor fold into the plane's body, which has adjustable fins that make it more aerodynamic. The plane is fueled by hydrogen and liquid oxygen.
The plane's Mach 4.5 speed seems to be its most impressive feature, but the patent notes its main improvement is the reduced noise of the sonic boom.
Shockwaves are created when an object has a speed faster than that of sound, creating a loud bang. For Airbus' supersonic plane, sound energy forms a ring around the body of the plane that is directed parallel to the ground to avoid shockwaves. According to the patent, the only noise heard is directly from under the plane for more or less a minute and only while the plane is at the airport.
The plane's speed is double the speed of, and almost reduces to none the noise of, Aerospatiale and British Aircraft Corp's Concorde and Voronezh Aircraft Production Association's Tupolev Tu-144 or "Charger."
