The Federal Aviation Administration has proposed replacing its decades-old ban on overland supersonic flight with a new noise-based regulatory framework, a move that could open American skies to commercial aircraft flying faster than the speed of sound for the first time since the 1970s.
FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford framed the shift as a direct result of technological progress that has outpaced the original prohibition. The agency aims to finalize the new noise-limit rules by 2027, The Sun reported, covering landing, takeoff, and cruising at altitude.
The regulatory change follows an executive order from President Trump directing the FAA to repeal the 1973 rule and establish modern noise standards. It is the clearest signal in half a century that Washington is serious about removing barriers to high-speed aviation, and about reclaiming American leadership in aerospace.
President Trump signed the executive order in early June, calling the existing prohibition a relic that had held back American ingenuity for too long. As the New York Post reported, Trump stated:
"For more than 50 years, outdated and overly restrictive regulations have grounded the promise of supersonic flight over land, stifling American ingenuity, weakening our global competitiveness, and ceding leadership to foreign adversaries."
The order did more than target supersonic flight. It directed the FAA to remove other regulations hindering high-speed aircraft development, a broad mandate aimed at clearing bureaucratic undergrowth that has accumulated since the Nixon era.
The original 1973 ban made sense at the time. Supersonic jets like the Concorde produced thunderous sonic booms that rattled windows and rattled nerves. But the rule froze in place while the technology kept advancing. For fifty years, the regulation never adapted. That is a long time to let a rule written for 1970s engineering govern 21st-century capability.
NASA and Lockheed Martin have been developing the experimental X-59 aircraft specifically to demonstrate that supersonic flight no longer has to mean deafening booms on the ground. The results so far back up the premise.
Earlier this month, the X-59 completed an 81-minute test flight, reaching a top speed of 713 mph and climbing to 43,400 feet. That flight fell just short of the speed of sound, 767 mph, but it was a warm-up.
On June 12, the aircraft hit Mach 1.4, roughly 924 mph, at 55,000 feet. That matched the target metrics set by NASA and Lockheed Martin. NASA aerospace engineer Larry Cliatt did not mince words about what it meant for the program.
"It was a huge deal for us."
The private sector is not waiting around, either. Boom Supersonic's XB-1 aircraft became the first privately developed supersonic jet to break the sound barrier in January 2025. CEO Blake Scholl captured the mood in the industry with two words: "Supersonic is back, baby!"
The FAA's proposed rule would not simply remove all restrictions and let supersonic jets rip across the continent unchecked. Instead, it replaces the outright prohibition with regulations focused on measurable noise limits, a smarter approach that regulates the actual problem (noise) rather than the technology itself (speed).
Bedford explained the logic in straightforward terms:
"Advances in aerospace engineering, materials science, noise reduction, and new operational concepts will eliminate the old sonic boom. This means we can ultimately repeal the ban from the 1970s on supersonic flight over US territory while minimizing noise impacts to residents in communities along the route and near airports."
That distinction matters. A noise standard gives manufacturers a clear engineering target. It tells them: build a quiet-enough aircraft, and you can fly it over land. The old rule simply said: no supersonic flight, period. One approach encourages innovation. The other smothers it.
The FAA is aiming to finalize both noise-based rules by 2027. If that timeline holds, commercial supersonic routes over the continental United States could become a reality within the next few years, potentially cutting a New York-to-Los Angeles flight to under four hours, as AP News noted in its coverage of the broader executive order package.
The supersonic rule change is part of a wider effort by the Trump administration to modernize aviation regulation. The same set of executive orders addressed drone policy, directing the FAA to expedite rules allowing drones to operate beyond operators' line of sight while imposing new national security restrictions, particularly targeting Chinese drone manufacturers.
Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, tied the initiatives together, saying the orders "address the growing threat of criminal, terrorist and foreign misuse of drones in U.S. airspace" and that the government has "a responsibility to protect and restore airspace sovereignty."
The FAA has also been active on safety fronts unrelated to speed. In May, the agency announced that more than 200 U.S. airports must install transponders on all airport vehicles, making their position and speed visible to air traffic control systems. That mandate came after a crash at LaGuardia Airport in March, when an Air Canada Express jet struck an airport rescue truck on a runway. Both pilots aboard the jet died. Forty-one passengers and crew members were injured and rushed to the hospital. Two Port Authority police officers on the truck suffered serious injuries, including broken bones, but survived.
The transponder requirement and the supersonic rule change share a common thread: the FAA updating its regulatory posture to match current realities rather than clinging to frameworks designed for a different era.
The 1973 ban did not just prevent sonic booms. It prevented an entire category of American commercial aviation from developing. While the regulation sat unchanged, other nations invested in high-speed aerospace research. The United States, the country that put men on the moon, told its own engineers and entrepreneurs that supersonic passenger flight over American soil was off limits.
The cost was not just in lost speed. It was in lost jobs, lost investment, and lost competitive standing. Companies that might have built supersonic airliners in the 1990s or 2000s faced a regulatory wall that made the business case impossible. Why design an aircraft that cannot fly its most natural routes?
Now, with the X-59 proving that quiet supersonic flight is achievable and private companies like Boom Supersonic already breaking the sound barrier, the regulatory framework is finally catching up to the engineering. The FAA's proposed noise-based rules would give the industry a workable path forward, one that protects communities from excessive noise while letting American aerospace companies compete.
The FAA has not yet disclosed the specific decibel thresholds that supersonic aircraft would need to meet under the new rules. It is also unclear whether the proposed framework applies only to experimental aircraft like the X-59 or to all supersonic planes seeking overland certification. The formal docket number and full text of the proposed rule have not been publicly identified in available reporting.
The 2027 target for finalizing the rules is ambitious. Federal rulemaking rarely moves on schedule, and public comment periods, environmental reviews, and industry lobbying could slow the process. But the executive order gives the FAA clear direction from the top, and the technology is no longer theoretical.
For fifty years, a regulation designed for the Concorde era kept American skies locked at subsonic speeds. The planes got better. The rules didn't. It's about time Washington caught up.
