The jet that could get you from London to New York in 80 minutes

Sign up to Simon Calder’s free travel email for expert advice and money-saving discounts Get Simon Calder’s Travel email Get Simon Calder’s Travel email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. The “Hyper Sting” is a new aircraft design by Oscar Viñals, a Spanish industrial and concept designer, which would fly at three times the speed of sound. Viñals said: “The fuselage would have the shape of a ‘big sting’ with a very sharp ‘nose’, that would have the function to control the front airflow, in order to redistribute it over the central part and over the wings.” The Hyper Sting has not yet been put to the test, but the designer claims it could reach a maximum speed of 2,664 mph. open image in gallery The aircraft is 328 feet long and can carry up to 170 passengers open image in gallery The current record holder for the London to NY trip is the Concorde The “cold fusion nuclear reactor” which would power the jet is currently just a concept, but Viñals plans for the aircraft to reach a Mach 3.5 capability, and be able to power four next generation hybrid turbojets and two ramjet engines. Hyper Sting’s designer, Viñals, said of Concorde’s downfall: “Concorde was a brilliant piece of machinery, a noble experiment, but it put too many emissions in the environment, too much noise into our communities, and was too expensive to operate.” His vision for the Hyper Sting is for it to become a blueprint for the future of commercial airplanes, claiming that “a new era of supersonic flight might be just around the corner”.