Ctrip thinks Chinese will become supersonic travellers; backs jet company Boom

Online travel giant Ctrip thinks that a portion of Chinese travellers would be willing to pay for supersonic flights that will cut the current air travel time to half. Supersonic fights are nothing new, as Air France and British Airways have tried to market supersonic flights in the past but proved to be commercially unviable.

Air travel has come a long way and has become the preferred mode of transportation for either domestic or international destinations, especially for mainland Chinese travellers who made 130 million trips last year.

Ctrip is betting that supersonic flights will find a market from a fraction of travel-obsessed Chinese. The Shanghai-based online travel booking company backed Boom, a Denver-based start trying to revive supersonic travel with hope and eagerness to resolve a lot of mistakes it had in the past.

Boom plans to create a 55-seat jet that flies more than twice the speed of sound. According to the company, the difference is the new carbon fibre composite fuselage and quiet, efficient turbofan engines, which promise to lower operating costs and noise levels.

With the backing from Ctrip, the strategic partnership aims to bring supersonic flights to China. “As a one-stop travel shop, we invest in the travel of tomorrow. We want our users to gain futuristic travel experiences,” Ctrip said in a statement.

“Turning far off lands into familiar neighbours”

With the volume of Chinese travellers heading overseas each year, China is set to become one of the largest markets for supersonic travel. The two companies plan to explore supersonic flights from China to the US, South Asia, and Oceania.

“When we fly twice as fast, the world becomes twice as small, turning far off lands into familiar neighbours,” said Blake Scholl, founder and chief executive of Boom.

Boom is not the only company that explores supersonic travel, US space agency NASA just awarded Lockheed Martin a $247.5 million contract to develop a supersonic aircraft dubbed as the X-Plane, an aircraft that is faster than sound.

Elon Musk’s Tesla floated the idea of a hypersonic space rocket airline. Musk’s proposed craft would take 39 minutes to fly from New York to Shanghai.

In the end, for Ctrip, the investment in Boom is the latest in a string of investments into tourism and travel-related companies as it seeks to tap into the massive Chinese market. Apart from the 130 million outbound trips, mainland Chinese travellers also spent an estimated US$115 billion on these journeys.