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By Scott Hamilton
Feb. 23, 2026, © Leeham News: “How long until Boom goes boom?”
“eVTOLs, the perfectly mediocre over-priced helicopter.”
“We lost the battle, but we had a more urban footprint.”
These are just a few of the pithy comments to come out of the annual Pacific Northwest Aerospace Alliance (PNAA) conference this month in suburban Seattle.
Boom, the 88-passenger supersonic transport program, was founded in December 2014. Ten years later, it flew a demonstrator aircraft that bears no similarities to the Overture SST that the company is developing as the first passenger SST airliner since the Concorde.
The Boom Overture SST has many, many skeptics. Two were speakers at the annual conference of the Pacific Northwest Aerospace Alliance. Credit: Boom.
No established engine maker agreed to power the Overture. Rolls-Royce had an exploratory contract for a time, but bowed out. Boom cobbled together three companies to make an engine. More recently, the company is going to use the engine, whenever it works, to power energy plants.
There are few believers in aerospace who think Boom will be successful, despite raising a reported $600m-plus in funding, building a production facility and winning conditional orders from Japan, United and American airlines.
Richard Aboulafia, a managing director of Aerodynamic Advisory, said he would just “write off” Boom. Kevin Michaels, also an MD at the same consultancy, was just as direct. “We have a bet in our office going how long until Boom goes boom?”
They were no more kind toward the prospect of eVTOLs, especially the possibility of the US military using battery-powered eVTOLs on the battlefield.
