The Boeing 2707 Super Sonic Transport (SST) was the United States’ answer to the Concorde.
The manufacturer designed it to be larger, fly further, and have greater capacity than
its European rival. However, the project was canceled in 1971, before two prototypes of
the plane were completed.
Boeing was hoping that the 2707 would carry 292 passengers in two classes. 28 customers
would be in first class with 40 inches of legroom, while 264 people would be in economy
with 34 inches of legroom. Powered by four General Electric GE4/J5P turbojets,
the aircraft could achieve a speed of Mach 2.7 with a range of approximately 6,400 km
or 3,500 nautical miles. While Boeing had been working on several small-scale
SST studies since 1952, there was a heightened pressure to deliver after the formal announcement
of the Concorde in 1962. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) director
Najeeb Halaby wrote a letter to President Kennedy stating that if the US did not immediately
ramp up its SST effort, the nation would lose 50,000 jobs, $4 billion in income, and $3
billion in capital as local carriers would turn to foreign manufacturers.
Several American outfits, including Boeing, Lockheed, and North American Aviation, submitted
their designs to take on the Concorde. On New Year’s Day 1967, Boeing found out that
its proposal, which went by the name “Model 733-390”, was the winner of the competition.
Following this achievement, Boeing went on to refine the proposal, developing the 2707.
Two years later, there were delivery positions reserved for 122 Boeing SSTs by 26 carriers.
There was interest from the likes of Alitalia, Delta Air Lines, Iberia, and KLM.
Boeing’s resident historian, Mike Lombardi, discussed with the BBC just how busy Boeing
was during this period: “To put into context just how ambitious
this was, when Boeing was working on supersonic transport, the company was also designing
what would be the 747 Jumbo Jet, and the 737 airliner had just entered service...There
was the space programme to get a man on the Moon, which Boeing was heavily involved in,
and there were some military projects as well.” However, in 1971, the US government ended
its financial support for the SST’s production, forcing its cancellation. At that moment,
there were 115 unfilled orders by 25 operators. Meanwhile, Concorde had 74 orders from 16
companies.
Lombardi states it was the global economic crisis that forced the scrapping of the project.
The change of circumstances made it inefficient to deploy such a jet.
“What ended up killing [Boeing’s design], and eventually Concorde itself, was the amount
of fuel you had to burn. It became prohibitive,” Lombardi said, as per the report.
“There was the recession of 1971, and the cost of oil started to rise. But even if it
hadn’t ended then, the oil crisis of 1973 would have killed it. It would have ended
up being a disastrous project if it had still gone ahead.”
Ultimately, the atmosphere across the US and the globe had changed by the 1970s and airlines
were changing their business models with the advent of the 747.
Making things worse for the 2707 were design issues. To fuel the robust engines and carry
the designed load, the plane would be too heavy to hit the skies. So, engineers needed
a lighter material such as titanium. However, at the time, this was incredibly expensive,
and authorities soon stopped any further funding. There was also a lot of environmental opposition
to the supersonic jet, which included concerns about ozone depletion and disruptive noise.
Concorde obviously went further than the 2707, but only slightly, with only 14 units of the
type entering commercial service. What are your thoughts about the Boeing 2707?
Would you have been keen to fly on this aircraft? Let us know what you think of the plane in
the comment section.