Here Comes the Concorde, Maybe

At 11:55 a.m. last Wednesday, just as planned in advance, the short, portly Cabinet officer made his phone call.

Hurrying away from testifying before the House Appropriations Committee, he borrowed 150 from an aide and dialed a private number from a phone booth. Then Secretary of Transportation William T. Coleman Jr. announced his decision to President Gerald Ford: he would let the British-French supersonic Concorde fly into and out of Washington and New York City, but only on a limited experimental and tightly controlled basis.

Go Ahead. The decision was entirely Coleman's, and the way he made it--and announced it--was typical of the feisty and independent approach he has taken to the nation's transportation problems since becoming Secretary last March. Coleman never even discussed the Concorde in detail with Ford or his aides. The President was pleased to allow someone else to handle the politically nettlesome question. So anxious was Coleman to keep his report secret that he had arranged to call the President only 20 minutes before the press conference at which he revealed his plan. Ford gave his quick approval, but even if he had not, Coleman intended to go ahead.

Coleman announced that the U.S. would allow Air France to fly two round trips a day from Paris to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport and one round trip to Dulles International, 20 miles outside Washington.

Flying from London to Kennedy and Dulles, British Airways was given permission to make the same number of flights. The Secretary approved this limited schedule for only 16 months--long enough, he said, to determine whether the advantages of developing supersonic flight across the North Atlantic were outweighed by the damage the Concorde might do to the environment and the distress it could cause to people on the ground. If the flights created any serious problems, Coleman said, they would be stopped "forthwith."

He made no attempt to dodge the claims of the environmentalists, who led the fight that stopped the development in 1971 of an American SST by killing its federal financing. In his 61-page decision, the Secretary frankly admitted that the 100-passenger Concorde "will be noisier than existing subsonic aircraft, save arguably for the B-707 and DC-8 on landing, which [form] 27% of the U.S. commercial fleet." As for fears that the Concorde would pollute the air or change the climate, Coleman found no evidence of any significant danger.

Some critics of the Concorde have charged it would reduce the concentration of ozone in the stratosphere that protects the earth from ultraviolet rays, thereby increasing the incidence of nonfatal skin cancer. Coleman judged that the stratospheric impact of the 16 months of test flights would be "minuscule," and the slight risk of causing additional cases of the disease--which he called "speculation"--was not enough to reject landing rights for the Concorde.

Noting that "any new technology brings with it a certain degree of risk," Coleman concluded that the Concorde's prospective benefits were worth the chance. An outright ban, he said, would be a blow to Britain and France, two allies that had sunk $2.8 billion into the Concorde. Further, Coleman claimed that turning down the Concorde "may well be condemning for all time or delaying for decades what might be a very significant technological advance for mankind." Second-generation Concordes, he said, could be quieter and less harmful to the environment.

Very Rich. Later Coleman dealt with the argument that the Concorde would only be a plaything or a convenience for the very rich, since the proposed fare for a New York-London round trip was $1,360, v. $1,156 on a regular jet for a first-class ticket--and $584 for tourist class in winter. In the past, the Secretary pointed out, wealthy passengers have been the first to pay the extra fares to ride on new aircraft, but the mass market, attracted by better service and time saving, soon followed.

Coleman's tempered and sensible decision immediately ran into flak. The Environmental Defense Fund filed a suit in federal court to overturn the ruling.

On Capitol Hill, the general mood was to let the tests go ahead, but several bills were introduced to ban the Concorde.

Wisconsin's Senator William Proxmire angrily declared that Coleman "has decided to place the profits of a foreign airline ahead of the health of Americans living around Kennedy and Dulles airports." Congressional or court action would be necessary to keep the jet out of Dulles, a federal facility, but New York's Governor Hugh Carey has veto power over what happens at Kennedy, and he has declared his flat opposition to the Concorde.

Although they recognized the difficulties ahead, the British and the French were delighted with Coleman's ruling.

Air France is talking of starting service in April and British Airways in early summer. If--and when--the Concorde gets off the ground, the sleek, needle-nosed jet would not only reduce the flight time across the Atlantic, from about seven to 3 1/2 hours, but turn time backward.

A passenger leaving London at 10:45 in the morning would arrive in Washington at 9:50 a.m.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.