Smooth Landing For the Birds

The SST bites the Big Apple

Air France Flight 001 sliced through the morning mist. The approach and landing were loud enough to drown out the protests of 15 pickets forlornly shouting "Stop the SST!" by an expressway ramp outside the terminal, but the noise level was a comfortable 14 decibels below the limit set by the Federal Aviation Administration. Moments earlier a Boeing 707 had registered slightly louder on a routine approach. Two minutes and five seconds after Flight 001 landed, British Airways Flight 171 touched down. The two Concordes then taxied to the terminal in a kind of victory parade, celebrating the inauguration of supersonic air service between Europe and New York.

The Anglo-French jet has been flying into Washington's Dulles International Airport for a year and a half, but New York had been closed to the plane under the pressure of local civic groups and politicians, who argued it was too noisy. The last barrier fell Oct. 17 when the U.S. Supreme Court denied the Port Authority's request to extend the ban.

With a cruising speed of 1,340 m.p.h., the Concorde whisks across the Atlantic in three hours and 25 minutes from London, five minutes longer from Paris, which is nearly three hours faster than subsonic travel. The fare is 20% higher than regular first class--and apparently well worth it to globetrotting business executives. The Concorde also does much to ease that bane of long-distance air travel, jet lag. Besides, said one investment banker: "We can leave London at 11:15 a.m., arrive in New York at 10 a.m. and be at work in Manhattan the same morning."

While the Concorde goes through a 16-month trial period of daily flights into Kennedy, both airlines are looking for other host cities. Last year British Airways lost $25 million and Air France $44 million operating their Concordes. To break even, BA would have to keep each of its five Concordes in the air 7 1/2 hours a day with 60% to 70% passenger loads this year. Right now the Concordes are logging about half that much flight time. BA now is negotiating with Braniff International to lease the plane for flights between Washington and Dallas--a final link in an "international oil route" to the Middle East. So concerned were Air France pilots about the Concorde's future that they voted to keep flying the plane this week even while grounding all other flights in a strike. The Concorde, they allowed, merited an "exceptional agreement" during its critical New York test.

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