Boom Supersonic broke ground Thursday on its Overture factory at a 62-acre campus at the Piedmont Triad International Airport in Greensboro. It will include a final assembly line, test facility and customer delivery center with as many as 2,400 employees by 2032, the company projects.
Gov. Roy Cooper, N.C. Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger and other leaders attended the event.
The Colorado-based company plans to build an airliner, the Overture, that will fly at twice the speed of today’s commercial jets. It has orders for 130 aircraft, including options and future purchases from American Airlines, United Airlines, and Japan Airlines.
To attract Boom, the state and Guilford County offered incentive packages worth more than $121 million, hinging on hiring at least 1,750 people and investing $500 million by the end of the decade. Florida also made a major push for the factory.
The Overture program lost Rolls-Royce as its engine manufacturer last year, but in December Boom said it would develop the technology with a group including Florida Turbine Technologies, StandardAero, and GE Additive, a unit of GE Aerospace.
Boom expects to begin production by 2024, with the first rollout to take place in 2025. Commercial flights could start as early as 2029.
BE&K Building Group is the contractor, while Melbourne, Fla.-based BRPH is the design partner. BE&K CEO Frank Holley lives in the Triangle.