Sonic Cruiser Said Something NEW

"We haven't seen a reaction like this since the beginning of the Jet Age," says Boeing vice-chairman Harry Stonecipher of Boeing's proposed Sonic Cruiser.

"The reaction really is that strong. A lot of it is the timing, and now is the time because of the fragmentation of the markets, and people wanting to go point-to-point, bypassing the hubs."

The Sonic Cruiser is the first airplane since the Boeing 707 (except Concorde) to actually offer the passenger anything all beyond putting more people on the same plane, Stonecipher told Show News. "Every airplane since then has just been an exercise in sizing, going a little bigger, or further." But the Sonic Cruiser offers to knock an hour or two off those long haul flights, depending on where the passenger wants to fly.

"Now the issue at hand with the airlines is what size do they want the Sonic Cruiser to be? I haven't the foggiest notion yet what size it will be. We will probably build three-150 passengers up to 300 or so, I guess. It depends what the airlines want."

Asked if the Sonic Cruiser is, as others claim, becoming the symbol of new technology for a new century, Stonecipher declined to be carried along by the hype.

"Maybe it's getting that way, but people are pretty pragmatic about it," he says. "It's about getting you there one hour quicker on a 3,000 mile flight, in an environmentally friendly way."