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Airbus has won a patent for a hypersonic passenger plane, but Concorde’s hydrogen-powered successor is unlikely to leave the drawing board any time soon.  The proposed airplane would cut the journey time from Paris to Tokyo from 12 to under three hours. The idea, first published in 2011, is to use three different kinds of engine power to jump above the atmosphere while still using regular runways for takeoff. It has now won approval from the US Patent Office.  The concept comes as commercial space companies such as Virgin Galactic pursue plans for low-level space flights. Airbus’s proposed plane has “gothic delta wings” that echo the elegant curves of Concorde ... But Airbus dampened any hopes of a quick return to the days of the Anglo-French supersonic jet, which was taken out of service in 2003 owing to high operating costs.  “Airbus Group and its divisions apply for hundreds of patents every year in order to protect intellectual property,” a spokesman said. “These patents are often based on R&D concepts and ideas in a very nascent stage of conceptualization, and not every patent progresses to becoming a fully realized technology or product.”  By climbing almost vertically, the new “ultra-rapid air vehicle’s” designers hope to avoid the supersonic boom that hampered Concorde’s deployment beyond the North Atlantic, where it flew at twice the speed of sound for more than 20 years.