20 firm orders to Aerion supersonic business jet for delivery in about 2023 so the wealthy 0.1% will fly twice as fast as others

Aerion Corporation is making a 8-12 passenger AS2 supersonic business jet, with key engineering support provide by the Airbus Group. Aerion has set a target to achieve FAA certification in 2021 and enter service in 2023

Aerion recently announced that the flight-service provider Flexjet has placed a firm order for 20 examples of the Aerion AS2 supersonic jet—for which the company began taking orders last year—making Flexjet the first fleet operator for the plane, the first publically available supersonic jet since commercial supersonic travel ended in 2003.

Each jet is priced at $120 million, for a total order potential of $2.4 billion. Aerion says the AS2 will carry passengers in a 30-foot-long cabin at speeds as fast as Mach 1.5 (990 mph). With a range of up to 5,466 miles, the AS2 cuts transatlantic travel time by 3 hours and shortens trans-Pacific routes by 6 hours or more.

Flexjet chairman Kenn Ricci called the airplane a “potential game changer for business travel.” Flexjet and Aerion will work together to design a custom, premium cabin interior for the Flexjet fleet. Aerion says for busy international travelers, all that extra speed quickly adds up to more productive days and even weeks over the course of a year. For example, a typical long-range business jet that would log about 250,000 miles in a year would fly for about 500 hours, while the same miles could be covered in the AS2 in about 300 hours. The difference for travelers is the equivalent of 25 8-hour workdays.