FASTER, PLEASE: ‘We just have to build it:’ Why Concorde’s successor is eyeing supersonic flights to America.

The founder of the company seeking to build a successor to Concorde has hit back at “flight shaming” activists who are demanding an end to mass air travel.

Blake Scholl, of Boom Supersonic, said that the demand to cut back on flights for the sake of limiting CO2 emissions is “depressing”.

He said: “There are some people who look at this and say, ‘Well, I guess we should all have less things. We should use less energy, we should go to fewer places.’ There’s been a lot of virtue-signalling and it’s very depressing.

“I believe in a future of abundance. I believe the north star is human flourishing and that we should build a future in which more people can go to more places more often.”

Mr Scholl, who spoke at last month’s Farnborough International Airshow where Boom unveiled the cockpit for its proposed 64-seat, 1,300mph Overture jet accompanied by four former Concorde pilots, argues that so-called flight shamers are ultimately seeking to stifle human progress.

He said: “Can you imagine this conversation on Zoom? It’s so much worse. I want our kids to grow up in a world where they’ve gone to other continents, they’ve broken bread with other people, they’ve experienced our shared community.

“To do that we need flights that are faster, we need to be at a price point people can afford, and, yes, we need to care for the planet.”

This looks much more like the 21st century I was promised as a kid than today’s subsonic commercial aviation: