It once took Concorde around 3.5 hours to whisk passengers from London to New York at the height of its fame. The supersonic aircraft was able to travel at a cruising speed of Mach 2.02 – roughly 1,345 miles per hours – as it sped across the Atlantic.
Concorde was not cheap, with a round trip ticket costing around US$7,574 back in 1996. It was, though, a popular form of transport with celebrities, royalty, and high-profile business executives – helping to enhance its image as a symbol of prestige and luxury. However, it could soon be possible to travel across the Atlantic in just under an hour, if the green light is finally given to an ultra ambitious infrastructure project.
The Transatlantic Tunnel connecting the UK with America has been a dream that has existed for over a century.
The tunnel would stretch 3,400 miles under the Atlantic Ocean, which in some places is thousands of metres deep.
It is estimated that its price tag would be a staggering £15 trillion – which has until now put off investors.
However, developments in vacuum tube technology have made the concept more viable.
By creating a vacuum within the tunnel and using pressurised vehicles, trains travelling through the structure could theoretically reach speeds of more than 3,000 mph.
Trains would not face any air resistance, allowing them to easily reach supersonic speeds never seen before.
The supersonic speed would allow travellers to reach the Big Apple in less than hour, making Concorde look slow by comparison.
The dream remains just that at the moment, although a number of various ideas for its construction have been put forward.
These include constructing a tunnel under the Atlantic to building one on stilts.
One design even proposed making the tunnel float, held in place by cables attached to the ocean floor.
Should the plan see the light of day, it may take a while to build. The Channel Tunnel linking France to the UK was built over a six-year period.
If the Transatlantic tunnel were built at the same speed, it would take 782 years to cross the 3,000 gap between the US and UK, according to Newsweek.