VALLEJO, CA — Congressman John Garamendi convened a maritime summit last week, pulling together military officers, labor leaders, educators, and elected officials from the local level up through Washington to talk through what it will take to rebuild the Bay Area’s maritime industry. Garamendi’s message was blunt: this isn’t really about any single ship or carrier. “Rebuilding the maritime industry is a national and economic security requirement,” he said. “This isn’t just about a new battleship or aircraft carrier, it’s about our country’s ability to build, maintain and crew the maritime capabilities our country relies on.

More than two decades after Concorde’s final flight, commercial supersonic travel has a credible successor on a defined timeline, and US policy is finally moving to accommodate it. Boom Supersonic CEO Blake Scholl said in April 2026 that the company expects to begin production of its Overture airliner in about two years, a claim precise enough to invite real scrutiny rather than concept-art skepticism. The regulatory unlock. On March 24, 2026, the US House passed the Supersonic Aviation Modernization Act, built around a single principle: if an operator can demonstrate a flight won’t produce a sonic boom audible at ground level, the FAA should permit it — reversing the core logic of the 1973 ban on civil supersonic flight over land that helped confine Concorde to ocean routes and choke its route economics.

The collision over Washington, D.C. still lingers as one of those moments that reshapes policy almost overnight. Sixty-seven lives lost in a dense, complex airspace where military, civilian, and rotary traffic intersect exposed something deeper than a single operational failure. It showed how fragile layered systems can become when proximity, speed, and mixed-use airspace all converge at once. In response, Congressman John Garamendi and the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee pushed forward the Airspace Location and Enhanced Risk Transparency Act, better known as the ALERT Act.