Guest editorial: A welcome, finally

Perhaps it was sour grapes because the United States had given up on developing its own supersonic transport. In 1975, the House actually voted to ban the Concorde from landing for six months, and the U.S. Department of Transportation held hearings on if and where it should land, then allowed it to enter U.S. service on a limited trial basis.

The Concorde began service to Washington in 1976 but did not begin serving the much larger New York market until the following year because of demonstrations in the neighborhoods around JFK airport against the noise. Worries about the sonic boom kept the Concorde from serving inland U.S. destinations.

That's all in the past.

Ample and warm coverage attended the arrival in June of a Concorde at the National Air and Space Museum's new facility at Dulles Airport outside Washington, and again earlier this month at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, where the American SST would have been built had the project gone ahead. And New York City practically had a festival this week as a Concorde was taken by barge to be displayed beside the carrier USS Intrepid.

The Concorde is finally welcome in the United States -- as a museum piece.