If you want to be extremely kind to American regulators, you could argue that they banned sonic booms out of an overabundance of caution and wanted to see how b

If you want to be extremely kind to American regulators, you could argue that they banned sonic booms out of an overabundance of caution and wanted to see how bad of a problem it was. But it was clear after years of Concorde flights over Asia and Europe that it was non-issue. They kept the rules on the books as a favor to Boeing, Lockheed, and McDonnell Douglas.