Global professional and standards organization SAE International has created industry panels surrounding supersonic and hypersonic aircraft, as well as human considerations in safety assessment.

The newly formed Supersonic Aircraft Steering Group is tasked with identifying and coordinating standardization activities necessary for both supersonic and hypersonic aircraft. This group will assemble industry stakeholders “to help shape the collective effort of supersonic aircraft systems and applications, and through the collaboration of industry and government, look to how industry standards may facilitate certification and regulatory compliance.”

Ben Murphy, head of sustainability policy at Boom Supersonic, praised the initiative to proactively evaluate standards necessary for certification and regulatory compliance, and added that he expects his company—which is developing a supersonic airliner—will participate to “help facilitate the timely return of commercial sustainable supersonic aircraft.”

In addition, SAE established the S-18H Human Considerations for Safety Assessment Committee “to bring together aviation stakeholder expertise to clarify relationships and resolve gaps involving human considerations in function development, safety assessments, and human factors processes.” The committee will produce reports and recommend practices and standards to help close those gaps, SAE said.

"The S-18H committee, in collaboration with the G-10 committee on Flight Deck Human Factors, has begun the work of developing and improving standards to comprehensively address the role of human considerations as part of the safety assessment process,” said Robert Voros, chair of S-18H and system safety Lead at Merlin Labs. “SAE has gathered expertise from several aerospace committees and the industry to assure the development of timely and useful documents that will address this critical issue in civil aviation."