Did you hear a sonic boom in Middle Georgia? Here’s why

An F-15 Eagle fighter plane will reach supersonic speed over Middle Georgia on Friday morning, causing a sonic boom.

Robins Air Force Base announced Friday that a sonic boom would happen around 11 a.m.

Roland Leach, chief of media for the base, said the base performs periodic maintenance on the F-15 Eagle fighter planes to refurbish all of the instruments and the airframe and bring it back to factory standards.

After the maintenance is finished, the team has to perform test flights to ensure the plane is operating properly.

“Part of the test flight routine causes them to have to go supersonic at some point,” Leach said. “In the process when it goes faster than the speed of sound, there’s a shockwave that comes off of the aircraft, and then when it hits the ground, the pressure equalizes and that’s where you hear the boom.”

The supersonic route is over a fairly unpopulated area, but the boom is loud enough to carry over a large distance, he said.

To minimize the impact of the boom, the aircraft flies at a minimum of 39,000 feet, which is more than 7 miles high, according to Robins AFB’s website.

The route starts at Robins AFB, goes near Milledgeville and back down around Columbus. The supersonic run starts around Columbus and ends just west of Eastman.

Although the sonic boom only occurs once, the sound is dragged throughout the entire run, so it can be heard throughout Middle Georgia, according to the website. A map of the route can be found on the website.

Whenever the base is going to perform a functional check flight on one of these aircrafts, they alert the public by posting on its Facebook page when the sonic boom will occur, Leach said.

After the supersonic flight, Leach said they will perform test flights in a local pattern around the base to check more instruments.