Aerion Breaks Ground on Florida HQ and Production Park

Aerion Supersonic has started the development of its $300 million, two-million-square-foot headquarters complex at Florida’s Orlando Melbourne International Airport (MLB). Dubbed Aerion Park, the 110-acre campus will house facilities for research, design, production, and interior completions of the company’s AS2 supersonic business jet and future hypersonic aircraft. Production of the Mach 1.4 AS2 is slated to begin in 2023, followed by first flight in 2025 and service entry in 2027.

“This is a truly exciting day for Aerion as we launch our new home and the future of sustainable supersonic flight here in Melbourne,” said Aerion chairman, president, and CEO Tom Vice. “We are building the future of mobility—a future where humanity can travel between any two points on our planet in three hours or less. We will change the world and bring a new sustainable means of supersonic and hypersonic flight to reality and it will happen here at Aerion Park.”

Flanking the main site will be an Aerion customer experience center with a completions center and a full-size AS2 cabin mockup where customers can customize interior configuration, materials, colors, and finishes.

The company said its aircraft assembly facility at MLB will span the equivalent of 14 football fields, while a systems integration laboratory will house the AS2 “iron bird.” Also on the site will be the engineering flight-test center. Aerion intends to flight test the AS2 from the site, in the surrounding airspace, in supersonic testing corridors, and at additional offsite locations.

In line with the company’s plans for the AS2 to fly carbon-neutral on 100 percent sustainable alternative fuel (SAF), Aerion Park is planned to be powered by clean energy. Thus, it will use solar power for manufacturing, have on-site electric vehicle charging stations, and reuse rainwater. Locally sourced recycled materials will be used in the construction of Aerion Park wherever possible, the company said, and the park will be “dedicated to creating zero waste.”

Aerion plans to deliver 300 aircraft over 10 years of production, supported by an order backlog that now exceeds $6.5 billion, above the company’s goal of $5 billion by year-end.