Billionaire's Supersonic Jet Advances With Factory Plans, Airbus

The Aerion AS2 has a subsonic long-range cruise of .95 M; further, in fact, than the 1.4 M long-range cruise. It is only the US that restricts speed; elsewhere, it is just boom that is restricted. Due to the different speeds of sound with temperature, an aircraft can cruise at 1.12 M and the boom will not reach the ground, as the ground speed is less than the speed of sound. Those Aerion guys are clever.

I wonder how they will deal with the sonic boom? It seems the plane would be limited to transatlantic flights unless it carried a whole lot of fuel. Also, would the ozone issue cause resistance from the public? I can see a lot of opposition to this. Personally, I'd love to see these challenges met.