STARTUP STAGE: Exosonic wants to cut flight times in half with supersonic airliners

Exosonic

Exosonic - winner of Phocuswright's Battleground: The Americas 2019 - sells quiet supersonic airliners to the commercial aviation industry.

Enabled by muted boom technology, Exosonic’s aircraft can fly overwater and overland and can cut flight times in half, which the company believes will be advantageous to full-service airlines competing with low-cost carriers. 

 

Describe both the business and technology aspects of your startup.

Exosonic's business is to sell quiet supersonic airliners to the commercial aviation industry, which includes airlines, lessors and other buyers. These aircraft are technologically unique because they have muted sonic booms allowing them to fly overwater and overland.

We can quiet the boom using sonic boom shaping techniques developed in the industry over the past 30 years. Our aircraft cut flight times in half by flying at Mach 1.8 over a range of 4,500 nautical miles carrying as many as 60 passengers in a dual‐class configuration.

What inspired you to create this company?

Co-founder and CEO Norris Tie was inspired to create Exosonic since he was little as he did not believe subsonic flights were to continue into perpetuity. He dreaded how long trans‐Pacific flights were as he visited overseas relatives. It seemed too that the commercial aviation industry was doing nothing to shorten flight times.

To usher in a faster future, Norris dedicated his academic and industry experience into examining new ways to fly faster. It wasn’t until his Lockheed Martin Skunk Works job working on NASA’s low‐boom supersonic flight demonstrator (X‐59) that he realized quiet, supersonic aviation was the answer to faster commercial flight.

Give us your SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis of the company.

Strengths

• Developing quiet supersonic aviation, providing us the ability to fly supersonically overwater and overland.
• Mentors and advisors are experts in either airline industry or supersonic aircraft design/manufacturing.
• Young team that can grow with the company over its 10-plus year lifetime.
• Very nimble and cost-effective as we’ve completed our first aircraft design and built substantial financial and engineering models with very little capital.

Weaknesses

• Behind the main competitor Boom Supersonic by a few years.
• Not well-capitalized.
• Need to establish ourselves as thought leaders in supersonic commercial aviation.

Opportunities

• Have received positive feedback on our concept from people within multiple airlines.
• Awarded an AFWERX/USAF STTR to explore developing a military version of our aircraft for troop/cargo transport with Stanford Professor Alonso’s Aerospace Design Lab.

Threats

• Boom Supersonic as they develop an overwater-only supersonic aircraft.
• Aerion Supersonic, however they build a smaller, slower supersonic business jet.
• SpaceX BFR system for intercontinental rocket travel.

What are the travel pain points you are trying to alleviate from both the customer and the industry perspective?

We provide our airline customers a new dimension to differentiate themselves from competitors: speed. Low‐cost carriers (LCCs) take away market share from full‐service airlines (FSAs) as both get a passenger to a destination in the same amount of time, but at different comfort levels and prices.

If an FSA can cut travel times in half with a business class product, the FSA saves passengers time so they can spend it on more important matters than sitting in aircraft cabins. LCCs would not be able to compete that way as a supersonic airliner would not work within their business model.

Our aircraft will introduce this speed differentiation to FSAs on a global scale as the aircraft can fly anywhere supersonically.

So you've got the product, now how will you get lots of customers?

We find potential customers through conferences or network connections. We work with people in airlines to develop our route profitability model, aircraft cost of ownership model and engineering tools. By integrating those three together based off these interested parties, we design a profitable aircraft for those airlines.

Tell us what process you've gone through to establish a genuine need for your company and the size of the addressable market.

We’ve talked to more than 80 business travelers, travel managers and airline folks across four travel conferences, personal networks and other connections to validate market demand for faster travel. The overwhelming response has been that if one can develop a supersonic airliner that costs about the same as business class yet reduces flight times in half, it’d be a no‐brainer; people would fly on the aircraft.

We have shown that there is a market for 1,000 supersonic aircraft from 2030 to 2050, which could be worth $200 billion depending on the aircraft sale price. The total premium passenger travel market size is worth around $278 billion in 2030. Both analyses are based off which routes and continental regions have enough demand and willingness‐to‐pay to support consistent supersonic transport.

How and when will you make money?

We currently make money from government grants to help with research and development. However, we plan to begin making money from our primary revenue source - aircraft sales - in 2029.

What are the backgrounds and previous achievements of the founding team, and why do you have what it takes to succeed with this business?

Norris Tie is a recent Stanford MBA graduate and spent three years working in aerospace as a propulsion engineer, all on vehicles that fly faster than the speed of sound. He’s been passionate about faster commercial flight since he was little and is dedicated to solving the problem.

While in industry, he has also met and received mentorship from many top aerospace engineers, who continue to mentor the team in both unofficial or official capacities. He has the academic and industry background, grit and passion to build this company.

CTO Tim MacDonald is completing his PhD in aircraft design at Stanford Professor Alonso’s Aerospace Design Lab. He is a core developer of the open-source conceptual aircraft design tool SUAVE, which originated in the lab and is used as the foundation of our aircraft design process. He is also passionate about bringing forth new, unconventional aircraft designs into the commercial market. Prior to his PhD program, he interned at Boeing working on commercial aircraft. He, too, has the right background, grit and passion to build this company

What's been the most difficult part of founding the business so far?

The most difficult part so far has been reaching out to airline fleet teams to understand how they think about aircraft purchases and fleet mixes. We’ve been in touch with a few of them, however more is always better in our case.

The way we reach them now is through our personal/advisor connections or through networking at conferences. We’d likely work most closely with them to develop the aircraft concept and ensure the aircraft’s relevance to the airline customer.

Generally, travel startups face a fairly tough time making an impact ‐ so why are you going to be one of the lucky ones?

Airlines are always looking for ways to differentiate themselves from competitors, especially FSAs vs. LCCs. We provide airlines a new dimension - speed - to compete with.

Also passengers want to get around the world faster and rather spend time at their destinations than in aircraft cabins. With supersonic transportation, we provide FSAs an edge to reclaim market share with while giving back passengers’ their most valuable asset: time. We have the right foundational team, perseverance, advisor network and aircraft concept to revive commercial supersonic aviation.

How important is flying supersonic overland to supersonic commercial flight?

Supersonic overland flight enabled by muted boom technology cannot be ignored. From our analysis, we’ve seen a consistent 200% increase in access to premium routes, premium travel market and aircraft units sold due to our muted sonic boom capability.

Of a 1,000 supersonic aircraft market, almost two-thirds of that would be for supersonic overland flight capable aircraft. Since no other competitor is working on muted boom aircraft, that would be our monopoly. Airlines too prefer an aircraft that can operate anywhere in the world, not only over oceanic routes.

For example, if one oceanic market collapses, airlines would want to utilize a supersonic aircraft on another route and overland flight gives them that flexibility. We believe our solution will usher in supersonic commercial aviation for good.

See Exosonic's pitch at Battleground below.