The United States is moving to push two long-stalled aviation frontiers into commercial service at once, using federal rulemaking and White House pressure to speed electric air taxis and civil supersonic flight towards market.
The effort ties together the Federal Aviation Administration, the Department of Transportation, and a set of executive orders signed in June 2025, and it could reshape how Americans travel over the next decade.
On the supersonic side, the FAA has published a proposed rule that would end a prohibition in place since 1973, a potential turning point for the long-promised supersonic revival.
That ban, written into 14 CFR 91.817, has stopped civil aircraft from exceeding Mach 1 over US land for more than five decades. It dates to public opposition in the 1960s, when test flights over cities such as Oklahoma City produced sonic booms that broke windows and generated thousands of damage complaints.
In its place the agency proposes an interim, noise-based standard rather than an outright speed limit.
