Speculation about Concorde

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34045, 8 January 1976, Page 9

Speculation about Concorde

•V Z P.A.Renter

WASHINGTON, January 8. Treaties and bilateral agreements with Britain and France will weigh heavily in the United States Government’s decision on whether to allow' the British-French Concorde airliner to fly to the United States, political sources speculate. The Secretary of Transportation (Mr William Coleman) asked about six dozen pro and anti-Concorde witnesses at a hearing in Washington for their legal interpretations of the effect such pacts would have on the ruling he intends to make on the supersonic airliner by February 4. "It must be noted that without such agreements. American aircraft would have no right to land in France or Great Britain, or vice-versa,” Mr Coleman said. He posed a series of legal questions which, he said, must be answered in the I course of deciding the Concorde issue, and set a oneweek deadline for answers.

The first on his list was whether the United States was obliged under bilateral pacts to grant France and Britain their request for) Concorde-landing rights.! since each had certified the! 1400-mile-an-hour iet as airworthy.