CRAMPED long haul flights spending the best part of an entire day on board an aircraft could be a thing of the past thanks to this incredible supersonic concept plane.
The Flash Falcon is an ambitious nuclear-powered double decker airliner design which could carry up to 250 passengers at speeds of up to Mach 3 – 2,300mph – at 60,000feet.
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Such speeds would reduce a flight from London to Australia to just four hours, shave a transatlantic crossing to New York to just 90 minutes, or a short trip to Malaga could take less than half an hour.
Passengers haven’t enjoyed a commercial supersonic airliner since the last Concorde was retired in 2003 after 27 years in service.
And ambitious Spanish designer Oscar Vinals believes the technology could be due a comeback in the coming decades.
His concept of the Flash Falcon lays out how a comfortable, fast and efficient the next generation of supersonic planes could be.
Vinals believes supersonic aircraft could take the skies once more by the 2030s – and hopes advances in technology will make the aircraft affordable, quiet and environmentally clean.
While he says the design is at this stage “hypothetical”, he hopes it lays out a realistic concept for the high speed planes of the near future.
Oscar said: “I believe that in a very near future supersonic flights will return, but with the most significant technology and advances of the 21st century.”
Flash Falcon would be a two decker plane powered by electric engines powered with an on board portable fusion reactor – enabling it to hit Mach 3.
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The two decks would be able to carry 250 passengers – with a business class and a “super tourist” class.
Passengers on the first deck would be set out in comfy seats with three rows of two.
And the top deck would have a central row of two flanked by two rows of solo seating on either side.
Oscar hopes the seating will all be “easy chairs” packed with gadgets so passengers can enjoy a comfy – and very fast- flight to their destination.
The world’s first and so far only supersonic airliner, Concorde, was a revolutionary British and French design.
But it was ultimately killed off by the high cost tickets, low passenger numbers, noise and safety concerns.
In the next fifteen years it could become a feasible reality
Oscar Vinals
Ever since lots of designers have speculated about a return of supersonic mass transit – but no one has yet taken the plunge.
Flash Flacon is nearly twice the size of Concorde, with the legendary plane only able to carry 110 passengers.
Oscar’s concept is for a jet which would be 335 feet long, compared to Concorde’s 203 feet, but with a much larger fuselage of 25 feet compared to 10 feet.
It also has a wingspan of 151 feet compared to the historic jet’s 84 feet.
He hopes that the plan would be equipped with six jets and a supersonic thruster which would push the plane to full speed like a rocket engine.
The thruster could be powered with a miniaturised fusion reactor – technology which is still theoretical but is being probed by some of the biggest engineering firms in the world, such as Lockheed Martin.
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And one of the plane’s most distinctive design features is Oscar’s hopes that the plane could lift off vertically like a Harrier.
The engines would pivot, allowing the massive plane to take off and land without need for a huge runway – meaning it can land at smaller airports.
Like his design of the smaller Hyper Sting aircraft, the Flash Falcon concept also features a nose cone – often known as a “quiet spike” – that he hopes would reduce the sound of a sonic boom.
Sonic booms are loud blasts which occur when an object breaks the sound barrier – something which was a major cause of nuisance during Concorde’s lifespan.
Laws in some countries restrict supersonic flights over land because of the bangs – but if a high speed plane, such as the Flash Falcon, was quiet it could help open up new flightpaths.
Oscar said: “This airplane would belong to an hypothetical generation that would be equipped with a technology based on fusion energy – the future [of] green energy – which today can only be found under development.
“But in the next fifteen years it could become a feasible reality, capable to generate great amounts of Electric Energy without the use of “contaminant” materials.
“That’s the principal power energy of this airplane concept and is thought to become real around 2030’s.”
He dreams one day the aircraft could be flying alongside his other supersize plane concepts, the Sky Whale and the Magnavem Big Bird.
However, so far no one has committed to building and testing one of Oscar’s monster machines.
He said this is down the fact the technology is “highly innovative” – but he has received interests from aeronautical engineers and universities.
Oscar however saw a model of one of his design feature at the exhibition on future transport at the Sheikh Abdullah Al Salem Cultural Centre in Kuwait.
It comes after we revealed the incredible concept design of the AeroCon Wingship, an extraordinary 3,000-passenger design for a massive ekranoplan flying boat.
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