By 2029, will civilians have access to supersonic jets for travel, which involve flying at speeds faster than the speed of sound (approximately 767 miles per hour at sea level)?
Update 2025-03-14 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Commercially Available Supersonic Travel Clarification:
Eligibility: Only non-military individuals booking and taking a flight count.
Usage: The flight must be for transportation purposes, not just for a one-off experience or test ride.
Exclusions: Private ownership of supersonic jets or isolated cases (such as an astronaut or a private collector) do not satisfy the criteria.
Resolution Requirement: A YES outcome requires a commercially available option for supersonic travel by 2029.
1,000@AhmedElsayyad Can you define "civilians have access to supersonic jets for travel" more precisely?
Which civilians? Presumably not everyone on Earth needs access for this to resolve YES. But also, if only one single civilian on Earth has a supersonic jet (e.g., Elon Musk), intuitively that should resolve NO - your question states "will civilians" (plural), which seems to imply some non-negligible subset of the general public. So, where exactly do you draw the line?
What does "for travel" mean? There are lots of edge cases here, e.g., a privately-owned retired F-104 that the owner is ferrying from one airport to another, or a NASA astronaut (who is a civilian) using a supersonic T-38 to travel from Houston to Cape Canaveral.
Also, there are demilitarized F-16s owned by civilians (e.g., Draken International for contractor training) - do those count?
What does it mean for a jet to "be supersonic"? Does it just have to be supersonic-capable under some circumstances (e.g., a T-38), or does it actually have to be flown at supersonic speed by end-of-2029?
Currently I think this market is unbettable due to unclear resolution criteria.
@pds Thanks for the feedback! To clarify, the intent of this question is whether civilians will have access to supersonic travel by 2029. This means the ability for non-military individuals to book and take a flight on a supersonic aircraft for transportation purposes (not just as an experience or test ride). It does not refer to private ownership of supersonic jets or isolated cases like astronauts using military-adjacent aircraft. The question is about whether a commercially available supersonic travel option exists for civilians by the given date. Hope this helps!
