What type of non-military aircraft can travel at speeds of Mach 2?

Question

Okay, a prospective client answered his cell phone and said he had better not talk 'right now' because he was travelling at Mach 2. He is a pilot, but doesn't have the keys to military type aircraft. So my question is WHAT TYPES of aircraft can fly at speeds of Mach 2 in the first place, at say 30-35,000 feet? Just curious.

Answer 1

Concord, is the only one I can think of.

Answer 2

I'm guessing he was using a figure of speech suggesting that is the speed his mind is running at.  There are no civilian passenger airplanes that travel faster than Mach 1 right now.  There is a small chance that he could have bought a retired military trainer or something like that, but it's not a standard production civil aircraft.  The Cessna Citation X is the fastest civil airplane currently in production.  It has a top speed of Mach 0.92.

Answer 3

At this point, there are no non-military aircraft that are even capable of Mach 1 since the the Concorde SSt was retired.  

There are a hand full of ex military fighters that will bust Mach being owned and flown by civilians.  Very rich, very lucky civilians.

First site is of a man owning and flying the F-104 Starfighter.

Second site is for the Collin's Foundation's F-4 Phantom.

The only other non-military aircraft to fly faster than Mach was Scaled Composite's Space Ship One.  One seat rocket powered aircraft that flew into space in 2004.

Answer 4

No no no, a learjet is not even close to the fastest or best climbing civilian aircraft and I have over two thousand hours in the beasts. Our Gulfstream III beats the pants off of it on equal flights.  Lear 35 Mmo: .82 mach. GIII Mmo: .87 mach. Time to climb to FL 410 on a SFO-BOS flight. Lear 35: Uh, can't do it before burning a couple hours of fuel. GIII 21 mins. Any pilot that exceed the speed of sound, in fact about mach .92 in a lear 35 went into a nearly unrecoverable "mach tuck" and he'd be hard pressed to keep it a secret as he would have dished about 25,000 feet of altitude if he was able to save it. Somehow I doubt ATC would not have seen it and asked for an explanation that he'd be hard pressed to come up with. Jeez.

Your friend could be flying one of many civilian T38 Talons or F5s that have become popular with the rich and famous.

Answer 5

In all actuality, the learjet is the fastest and has the highest rate of climb available of any non-military aircraft. I have talked to pilots that have exceeded the speed of sound, though, they would never actually confirm it on record.