The FAA Wants to Lift the 50-Year Ban on Supersonic Flight Over Land

The ability to travel at the speed of sound is on the horizon—in the United States, at least.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) just announced a new proposal that would lift the just-over 50-year ban on supersonic flights over the continental U.S. Under the suggested guidelines, the agency would set a noise-based certification standard for supersonic aircraft.

The FAA also revealed plans for more rules to come later this year, which would establish landing and takeoff noise standards for any aircraft flying at Mach 1 and above—the benchmark for supersonic sound, which is a speed of more than 770 mph. A traditional commercial aircraft, meanwhile, flies at 550 to 600 mph.

With breaking the sound barrier comes a sonic boom, a massive noise disturbance that led the FAA to ban supersonic flight over land in the first place. As such, reducing those disruptions is a key part of the FAA’s new plan. In its proposal, it outlines using a flight technique called Mach cutoff in which the aircraft’s design, atmospheric conditions, speed, and altitude work together to refract the sonic boom back into the atmosphere, thereby reducing its impact on land.

“Advances in aerospace engineering, materials science, noise reduction, and new operational concepts will eliminate the old sonic boom,” FAA administrator Bryan Bedford said in a press release. “This means we can ultimately repeal the ban from the 1970s on supersonic flight over U.S. territory while minimizing noise impacts to residents in communities along the route and near airports.”

The agency plans to have both new rules, which would legalize supersonic flight, finalized by mid-2027. And the U.S. government has its eyes on travel abroad as well, calling for the FAA to work with foreign aviation authorities for international supersonic flights, too.

Quite a few companies have been looking to bring back commercial supersonic travel since the Concorde flew for the last time in 2003, the famed aircraft that reduced the time it took to get across the pond by half. One such proponent is Boom’s Overture, which is designed to hit Mach 1.7 and has orders from both United and American Airlines under its wing. The company’s XB-1 demonstrator jet broke the sound barrier for the first time in 2025 on a test flight. Also vying for the supersonic airspace is Spike Aviation, which has its S-512 Diplomat aircraft that is focused on a minimal supersonic boom and can fly from New York to Paris in under four hours.

Should the FAA’s proposals become law, it’s a race to see which company will be the first to get passengers up in the skies.