Boeing 2707: $1 Billion Spent. Then Congress Said No.

On the last day of 1966, Boeing won the contract to build America's supersonic airliner: the Boeing 2707, bigger and faster than Concorde, built mostly with taxpayer money. Kennedy had promised it in 1963. Airlines lined up for delivery positions. A full-size mockup went on show in Seattle. It never flew. Not one prototype was finished. The swing wing turned out too heavy, the sonic boom tests over Oklahoma City in 1964 left more than 15,000 complaints, and in March and May 1971 Congress voted to stop paying. By the time the bills for shutting it down were settled, Washington had spent about a billion dollars. The fight left something behind. In 1973 the FAA banned civilian supersonic flight over the United States. More than fifty years later, that rule is still on the books, even as NASA's X-59 and a new generation of companies try to bring supersonic travel back. If you were around in 1971, did you think the SST should have been built? Tell us in the comments. CHAPTERS 0:00 Still against the rules 1:07 The Winner (1966 to 1967) 3:31 Kennedy's Promise (1962 to 1964) 6:55 The Boom (1964 to 1968) 9:48 The Wing (1967 to 1970) 13:20 The Vote (1963 to 1971) 17:29 Seattle (1968 to 1981) 19:54 The Rule (1973) 22:47 The Comeback (2025 to 2026) KEY SOURCES FAA, Civil Aircraft Sonic Boom rule, 38 FR 8051 (March 28, 1973), effective April 27, 1973; 14 CFR 91.817 (eCFR) FAA, proposed rule on supersonic flight over land, 91 FR 40470 (July 2, 2026), docket FAA-2026-6935 Executive Order 14304, "Leading the World in Supersonic Flight" (June 6, 2025) Congressional Record, Senate and House votes on SST funding, December 1970 to May 1971; Public Laws 92-18 and 92-74 (1971) H.R. 3410 and S. 1759 (119th Congress), congress.gov Erik M. Conway, High-Speed Dreams: NASA and the Technopolitics of Supersonic Transportation (Johns Hopkins, 2005); NASA History Office Mel Horwitch, Clipped Wings: The American SST Conflict (MIT Press, 1982) Paul N. Borsky / NORC, Community Reactions to Sonic Booms in the Oklahoma City Area (1965); FAA Oklahoma City sonic boom study reports Report of the President's Ad Hoc Review Committee on the SST (Garwin report, 1969, released 1971) H. Johnston, "Reduction of Stratospheric Ozone by Nitrogen Oxide Catalysts from Supersonic Transport Exhaust," Science (August 6, 1971) Museum of Flight, Seattle; Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (GE4 engine); NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center (X-59) The 2707 was not killed "by one vote": the Senate's final vote on May 19, 1971 was 58 to 37. The 49 to 48 vote that year was on the Lockheed loan guarantee. PHOTO AND FOOTAGE CREDITS (full list in the pinned comment) NASA (Ames, Glenn, Langley, Armstrong Flight Research Center), public domain U.S. National Archives, public domain "Ticket Through the Sound Barrier" (NASA, 1966) and "USAF Sonic Boom Test Program" (U.S. Air Force, 1964), Internet Archive, public domain Tu-144 film "Takeoff SST" (CIA / National Archives), Internet Archive, CC0 San Diego Air & Space Museum Archives (SDASM), Flickr Commons, no known copyright restrictions Clemens Vasters, Craig Howell, Seattle Municipal Archives, Chris Rycroft, Eric Friedebach, delius98, Steve Shook, Flickr, CC BY 2.0; Gordon Werner, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0 Wikimedia Commons contributors listed in the pinned comment Photos are shown unaltered except for cropping, color and framing. Narration and background music are AI-generated. Some atmospheric scenes are AI-generated illustrations; no aircraft in this video is AI-generated. #aviationhistory #supersonic #Boeing2707