Aviation: Waiting at the Runway

For months the U.S. aviation industry has been waiting anxiously for May 1, the day on which FAA Administrator Najeeb Halaby was scheduled to announce the winners in the first phase of the design competition to build the airframe and engines for a U.S. supersonic airliner. Last week May Day came and went—and no announcement from Halaby. The U.S. aviation industry suddenly has good reason to remember the meaning of mayday in international code: Help!

Instead of letting Halaby go ahead, President Johnson stepped in and, in effect, canceled the FAA-directed program. He gave the responsibility for supervising the building of an American SST to an advisory group headed by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Aside from being dissatisfied with the FAA's performance so far, the President felt that Congress would not approve appropriations for both the poverty program and the SST at the same time—particularly since the aviation industry is balking at paying even 10% of the SST cost. He therefore chose to delay the SST. The U.S. is already far behind the Anglo-French consortium, which expects to put its Vlach 2 Concorde into commercial service in 1971. U.S. aviation industrialists now hope that the President has heard heir mayday cries and will see fit to put the U.S. SST program back on he runway.