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United CEO doubts Boom Supersonic can deliver first airliner by 2029 as AI turbine deal falls through
United Airlines' CEO says Boom Supersonic won't hit its 2029 delivery target, and a $1.25 billion turbine deal with data center developer Crusoe has already collapsed.
Boom Supersonic is pivoting hard into AI infrastructure while its core aviation business faces fresh skepticism from one of its earliest airline partners. United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said the company's 2029 delivery target for the Overture supersonic airliner will not be met, and a $1.25 billion turbine deal with data center developer Crusoe has already collapsed.
United CEO casts doubt on 2029 timeline
Kirby's latest assessment came during an October 28, 2026 appearance on the Office Hours: Business Edition podcast. "'29 is their official timeline," Kirby said. "It's not going to happen in '29-it's going to take longer." He added that Boom still has "a lot of hurdles to overcome" in developing Overture and securing FAA certification. "So it's not a guarantee that they'll overcome," he said.
This follows Kirby's March estimate that put the odds of Overture entering commercial service at "50-50." Boom holds conditional agreements with American Airlines, Japan Airlines, and United, backed by non-refundable deposits of undisclosed amounts. The company has not yet responded to requests for comment.
The Overture production factory in Greensboro, North Carolina, completed in 2024 with more than $50 million in state taxpayer funding, has remained largely idle since construction finished.
A factory pivot to gas turbines for data centers
On October 22, Boom unveiled a new factory in Centennial, Colorado dedicated to producing the Superpower, a 42-megawatt natural gas turbine for AI data centers. US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and Colorado Governor Jared Polis attended the event. Boom aims to deliver its first turbines by mid-2027, scaling to 25 units in 2028 and 50 by 2029.
The company describes the turbine work as synergistic with its Symphony engine program for Overture. A prototype turbine core, called Sprint Core, is slated for testing at the Colorado Air & Space Port before Thanksgiving. Boom plans to fire the turbine for the first time ahead of that deadline.
A $1.25 billion deal falls through
Boom CEO Blake Scholl acknowledged in a September 25 social media post that data center developer Crusoe had backed out of a deal to purchase 29 turbines. The agreement would have been worth approximately $1.25 billion. Crusoe builds data centers in Texas for Oracle, Google, and Microsoft, drawing on natural gas and renewables.
Scholl said Boom "will be delivering about 250MW of Superpowers next year to other sites" but did not name the customers. The company is entering a market where data center developers increasingly turn to natural gas, including aeroderivative turbines adapted from aircraft engines, to bring projects online quickly.
Regulatory tailwinds, but certification remains distant
The Trump administration has supported Boom's supersonic ambitions. In June 2026, the FAA proposed a rule to overturn the long-standing ban on commercial supersonic flights over US airspace, following a presidential executive order. Boom's XB-1 demonstrator previously flew in 2024 and 2025 to validate a "boomless cruise" concept using the Mach cutoff phenomenon, where shockwaves refract upward under specific atmospheric conditions.
NASA is separately testing the X-59 experimental aircraft with a long nose designed to reduce sonic booms-an entirely different approach from Boom's Mach cutoff strategy. Neither program has yet produced a certified commercial airliner.
Why this matters for executives and strategy
Boom is now a company running two capital-intensive programs-supersonic aviation and industrial gas turbines-on parallel tracks, with one major customer deal already lost and its anchor aviation partner publicly questioning timelines. For strategists and investors, the situation highlights the execution risk of pursuing adjacent markets before the core product reaches commercial viability. The idle North Carolina factory also signals potential political and financial exposure for stakeholders who committed public funds based on manufacturing milestones that have not materialized.