NASA's 'Son of Concorde' X-59 jet completes important test flights to help return of supersonic commercial travel

NASA is still working on X-59 – sometimes also known as Quesst, because that’s the name of the mission – potentially the first commercially viable supersonic aircraft since Concorde.

We’re still a long way from a tangible result, but it’s nice to see that progress is still being made.

The good news is, the plane exists, and it is being tested as we speak.

The bad news has to do with its current top speed.

The idea behind Quesst

NASA has been working on the X-59 aircraft for a while now, and even though we’re still a long way from supersonic travel as Concorde flyers knew it, this is the first real attempt at conquering those speeds again in about 20 years.

NASA isn’t alone; private firm Boom Supersonic recently successfully flight-tested its XB-1 demonstrator, reaching supersonic speeds in 2025.

In its own words, ‘Quesst is the name of our mission to enable commercial, faster-than-sound air travel over land.’

They didn’t use the word ‘again’ in their statement, but we will.

After over 20 years – the last Concorde took off in 2003 – the time is due.

X-59 is already flying, just not as fast as we hoped

NASA has already built a functioning prototype for X-59, which is the good news.

The plane is already airworthy, and it has already completed a couple of test flights.

Earlier this month, NASA test pilot Jim ‘Clue’ Less – we’re not joking, this was literally on its website – departed from the Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, and flew for 90 minutes, reaching 20,000 feet and 460mph.

We’re a long way from supersonic, which is 600mph to 770 mph, depending on how you ‘count’ it, but it’s just a matter of time.

It may not happen tomorrow, though.

Most aviation experts agree that even though progress is being made, we’re still years away from the moment John and Jane Smith can actually go ahead and buy a ticket from NYC to London (or viceversa) and fly supersonic.

We also had a chat with Robert Cullemore, an independent aviation consultant and expert with 19 years of experience in the industry, and in his view, supersonic flights aren’t one of the changes we can expect in the coming future.

“For the vast majority of the aviation industry, [in the foreseeable future] we will see increases in fuel efficiency as well as an increase in use of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) across narrow-body and wide-body operations,” he told Supercar Blondie.

“We’ll also likely see the first eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft) operations, probably in the Middle East,” he added.

For supersonic flights, we may have to wait a little longer.

More importantly, NASA has apparently solved the other key issue with supersonic flying: the sonic boom.

The aerospace agency somehow managed to reduce the loud sonic boom into a sonic ‘thump.’

That’s the really good part because, lest we forget, some countries simply banned supersonic airliners outright precisely for the sonic boom.