In the 1960s, the USA looked enviously at Concorde and Tupolev Tu-144, and the Americans started to develop a supersonic aircraft, a Supersonic Transport, or SST for short.
Boeing's design won over Lockheed. For the Boeing 2707, the aircraft manufacturer aimed for a speed of up to Mach 3. In expectation of future supersonic fleets, a gigantic airport east of Miami, FL, was planned and built in the late 1960s. Today, only one runway is left of the Everglades Jetport.
Back then, people thought that when Concorde and SST went into service, people would want to fly with them and no longer with a subsonic aircraft," said Boeing's in-house historian Mike Lombardi. Based on these predictions, Dade County wanted to build an airport in the south of the state of Florida that would offer adequate opportunities for future supersonic fleets.
"Giant Jetport" with Six Runways
So they planned a "gigantic jet port" in the middle of the Everglades swamp area. The name: Everglades Jetport or Big Cypress Swamp Jetport. It was to have six runways and be five times larger than the New York JFK airport at that time. The mega-airport would have had the advantage that the supersonic aircraft would not have had to fly over inhabited areas on their way to and from the Atlantic.
Work began in 1968, but in the years that followed, there were two serious problems. Firstly, there was resistance to the negative impact the airport would have on the ecosystem in the Everglades National Park. Secondly, the development of the SST was delayed. As fuel prices rose at the same time and concerns about the sonic boom were raised, Congress withdrew funding for the plane in 1971.
Miami Air Show in the Everglades
Not even the two prototypes of the Boeing 2707 have been completed. After all, the planned gigantic airport has a runway. Today it is used for training flights - the airport is now called Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport.
In 2015, it made the headlines once again. At that time, the attempt to have a Miami Air Show held there - modeled on the Paris Air Show or the Farnborough Air Show - failed. That is why it is very quiet at Dade-Collier Airport today. Local newspapers already wrote that he sees alligators, snakes, deer, bobcats, and bears more often than he sees planes.
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