Abstract Supersonic hydrogen–air cylindrical mixing layer is numerically analyzed to investigate the effect of inlet swirl on ignition delay time in scramjets. Combustion is treated using detailed chemical kinetics. One-equation turbulence model of Spalart and Allmaras is chosen to study the problem and advection upstream splitting method is used as computational scheme. The results show that swirling both fuel and oxidizer streams may drastically decrease the ignition distance in supersonic combustion, unlike using the swirl just in fuel stream which has no helpful effect.