A long-standing ban on commercial supersonic flights over the United States would be overturned by a new rule proposed by the US Federal Aviation Administration. This could pave the way for the possible return of supersonic commercial airliners, provided such aircraft can reduce the ground-level impacts of their sonic booms.
The FAA originally banned ground-based supersonic flights by civil aircraft in 1973, following U.S. military tests involving supersonic flights over American cities such as Oklahoma City, Chicago and St. Louis in the 1960s. But the Trump administration has advocated repealing the ban to pave the way for supersonic aircraft to operate without sonic disturbances. So the FAA’s new regulatory action on June 30, 2026 follows the direction of an executive order issued by President Trump on June 6, 2025.
The newly proposed rule would replace the 53-year-old ban with an interim “noise-based” certification standard that requires any surface sonic boom overpressure to be kept below 0.11 pounds per square foot. That proposed standard builds on Colorado-based startup Boom Supersonic having demonstrated silent Mach-cut flights with its
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