Paris to New York in 1.5 hours: The hydrogen jet looking to usher in hypersonic air travel

The last aircraft to manage the feat was the Concorde, the supersonic result of Anglo-French engineering.

In its heyday, it crossed the Atlantic in record time in around 3.5 hours, flying at a speed of over 2,100 km/h.

But a Swiss start-up is looking to cut the current journey time from Paris to New York down from 8 hours to just an hour and a half - with its hypersonic, hydrogen-powered passenger jet.

While other companies are dabbling again with supersonic flight, Destinus aims to build the first commercial hydrogen-powered aircraft that can travel at five times the speed of sound and at altitudes of more than 33 km (over 100,000 ft).

The company has been testing its prototype aircraft for the past couple of years, announcing successful test flights of its second prototype - Eiger - at the end of 2022.

"The prototypes look different from the final product because the final product has very advanced propulsion technology," Bart Van Hove, Destinus' head of advanced studies, said during this year's Paris Air Show at Le Bourget.

"It has different types of engines, turbo jets, and ramjet, all hydrogen-powered and all hydrogen-cooled. So that goes with a particular vehicle configuration as shape, as you see in our vision, of a plane that grabs a huge amount of air and there is a central duct and that splits into various engine ducts. 

"This is not the case on the prototype. It's more of a classical configuration because we go step by step".

In April, the company received a boast in investment, announcing its participation in a programme run by Spain’s Ministry of Science, part of the Spanish government’s plans to develop hydrogen-powered supersonic flights.

The agency overseeing the ministry's programme, the Centro para el Desarrollo