I read a great book some time ago titled "Flying Concorde" by one of the
pilots (found it in the public library). Fun reading. I believe that
they are restricted to subsonic over land in the USA (which is why it
rarely visits the west coast. Costs too much to operate that slow).

There were concerns about the frequent sonic boom disturbing wildlife on
land and ongoing concerns about it affecting sea life (I beg to differ).
I wonder how the boom from the plane differs from the boom from a
lightning strike (which, I hear from unconfirmed sources, hits the
planet somewhere about 44,000 times/day - I bet Wirt could give an
accurate number :-)

Tom Brandt wrote:
>
> At 04:49 PM 07/27/00, Nick Demos wrote:
> >It kind of boggles my mind with our advances in technology there bo
> >foreseeable successors to the COncorde.  Wouldn't a 400 passenger SST
> >that could make four round trips a day between America and europe be
> >economically viable?
>
> One of the issues alluded to in a previous message is noise - SSTs are so
> noisy that Concorde is restricted from flying most places in the US.  They
> occasionally make an appearance in other US cities besides Washington and
> NY as a charter, but I am not sure if they get a special waiver to fly to
> other cities, of if they fly to them as subsonic speeds.
>
> I did see a TV report after the crash that said someone is working on a
> quiet SST, but whether such a thing will get off the ground is an open
> question.
>
> Tom Brandt
> Northtech Systems, Inc.
> http://www.northtech.com