Sonic boom in DC: Plane that crashed lost contact with air traffic control just after takeoff

The Soviet Union became the first country in 1968 to fly a supersonic passenger plane, the Tupolev TU-144. But a fatal crash at the 1973 Paris Air Show ended that ambition.

In 1963, the U.S. government announced a major program to develop a supersonic passenger aircraft. But serious problems soon surfaced, including massive development costs and doubts about financial viability. The program was terminated in 1971.

During the 1960s, NASA collected data on the effects of sonic booms on people who experienced them. Experiments showed that many described the booms as “annoying,” “irritating” and “startling,” NASA found.

In 1973, the Federal Aviation Administration prohibited supersonic flights over land, “based on the expectation that such flights would cause a sonic boom to reach the ground,” the Congressional Research Service wrote.

The Concorde, an Anglo-French supersonic jetliner, saw success for a number of years after making its first commercial flights in 1976. However, its ear-rattling sonic booms irritated people on the ground and led to restrictions on where the jet could fly.

In the U.S., the plane flew mainly to New York and Washington. With four jet engines and afterburners, the plane could fly at twice the speed of sound and cruised at close to 60,000 feet, far above other airliners. It promised to revolutionize long-distance travel by cutting flying time from the U.S. East Coast to Europe from eight hours to three and a half hours.

The Concorde never caught on widely. The plane’s economics were challenging, and its sonic booms led it to be banned on many overland routes. Only 20 were built; 14 of which were used for passenger service.

In 2003, British Airways and Air France both stopped Concorde service.

Sonic booms are still heard in the U.S. from the nation’s military aircraft. In 2021, a sonic boom caused widespread concern that there was an earthquake on the Oregon coast.

Military officials with the 142nd Wing of the Oregon Air National Guard said a single-pilot F-15C and a two-person F-15D Eagle had inadvertently reached supersonic speeds as they flew over the Pacific Ocean.

Only minutes into a doomed journey that ended on a remote Virginia mountain, the pilot of a business jet was not responding to air traffic control instructions and the situation was soon reported to a network that includes military, security and law enforcement agencies, according to federal aviation officials.

Despite being out of contact on its ascent Sunday afternoon, the jet that had just taken off from a Tennessee airport continued toward its intended destination on Long Island, then turning to fly back to Virginia where it slammed into a mountain, killing the four people aboard.

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