The Supersonic Transport - A beautiful, scientifically advanced, absolutely brilliant technical triumph-and every aviation buff's wet dream! Britain and France felt it would re-establish their eminence as leading high-tech powers; it was a prestige thing for them. For a while, they were competing with the USA to develop the aircraft, but America did the math and came to its senses.

Sure, it was technically possible to build a futuristic, superfast
passenger plane to cross the Atlantic in half the time of a conventional jet. But the SST lost money. They were expensive to make, maintain and operate. Sure, there were a handful of rich celebrities that were willing to pay premium prices to cut a few hours off their transatlantic commute time, but airlines are businesses, and they just couldn't find the customers to support this new service. They could not charge passengers what it really cost to pay for the trip, and they lost money on every seat. Maybe Mick Jagger could afford it but not your basic tourist or business traveler.

There were other problems, too. There were sonic booms and high fuel consumption, and eventually safety concerns, but what killed the SST is that it just couldn't make any money. Let's face it, no one really NEEDED to get across the pond in 2 hours. And without the lucrative transatlantic trade to show the way, other potential markets failed to develop.

The SST lost money, but the frogs and the limeys had bet their reputations on it and they continued pouring francs and pounds into the program. After one terrible accident (which was probably not the plane's fault), the operators finally had the excuse they needed to shut the program down.

The Soviets built their own SST too. It never flew commercially either.

Flew in from Miami Beach, B-O-A-C
Didn't get to bed last night
On the way, the paper bag was on my knee
Man, I had a dreadful flight