Japan has successfully tested a revolutionary design for a supersonic airliner to replace Concorde, three years after the first attempt ended in a fiery crash in the Australian desert, a report said.

A scale model of an airliner that would carry 300 passengers at twice the speed of sound was launched from the Woomera test site in the outback with the aid of a rocket shortly after dawn, Japan’s Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa) said.
“It went well, it was successful,” a Jaxa spokeswoman was quoted as saying from the test site, which was closed to the media. In the test, the 11.5-m scale model of the 104-m airliner separated from the rocket at around 18,000 m and glided at Mach 2 (2,450 km per hour) for about 15 minutes.
The multi-million dollar test aircraft landed safely, the spokeswoman said in remarks published in an AFP report. In the first attempt at Woomera in July 2003, the rocket carrying the scale model veered wildly out of control a few seconds after takeoff and crashed in flames. The trial put to the test the aerodynamic design of an aircraft intended to fly twice the distance and seat three times the number of passengers as Concorde, the iconic Anglo-French jet that was retired in 2003.