Abandoned £1.5billion airport that wanted to be the ‘world's biggest' – with America's answer to Concorde

The Irish Sun

08-05-2025

A NEW airport that wanted to be the world's biggest would have have welcomed Brits to a popular holiday destination - only for it to never open.
Everglades Jetport in Florida hoped to be a major six-runway airport that would welcome some of the fastest flights in the world.
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An multi-billion airport once wanted to be the biggest in the world
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The airport would have been built with access to the Miami coastline
Credit: Google
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It would have been the home of America's answer to Concorde
Credit: Getty
This included the Boeing 2707, America's answer to Concorde which would have flown up to 1,800 miles an hour.
This would have been much faster than
The plan for the huge new airport was revealed in 1968, during the Golden Age of travel.
The need for the new airport was said to be because of the huge boom in
travellers
visiting the nearby areas, with Miami International Airport welcoming up to 10million passengers at that time.
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Longer-term plans would see Everglades Jetport replace Miami Airport entirely.
It wanted to be the largest airport in the world, with plans showing it to be six times larger than the current
A newspaper article said: "The
future
development of Marco Island received a tremendous boost recently with the start of construction of a mammoth jetport, the biggest ever, anywhere just 48 miles away."
Around 26,000 acres of land was bought - to put this into comparison, Miami International Airport is around 3,300 acres.
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The airport would be linked to the coastline too with a huge new interstate motorway and monorail system.
The governor of Florida at the time, Claude R Kirk Jr, added: "With our new supersonic jetport, South Florida is going to become a major gateway to Europe and a jumping-off place for the Pacific as well."
Massive abandoned airport 3 times the size of Monaco left with rusting jumbo jets to be bulldozed and turned into new city
This was backed by Stuart Tipton, then president of Airlines for America who said: "The recent action taken by the Dade County Port Authority to construct a new jetport makes certain that South
However, concerns were raved about the damage to the local environment which it claimed would "destroy the Everglades National Park".
Estimates costs of the airport were around $2billion (£1.5billion), the
This was followed by the scrapping of the Boeing 2707 project in 1971.
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Just one runway ends up being built
Credit: Google Earth
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The airport is now used as a training ground for pilots
Credit: Public Domain
It has since been taken over by the Miami Dade Aviation Department, and is called the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport.
The 10,000ft runway is now used by pilots for training.
Lonny Craven, who now manages the airport, said: "It was supposed to be the airport for tomorrow.'
Closer to home,
Having opened in 1920, it closed in 1
958 after
London Gatwick
was redeveloped
, and has since been turned into a museum.
Top 15 busiest airports in the UK
Here are the 15 busiest airports in the UK by passenger numbers in 2023
London Heathrow - 79.2 million
London Gatwick - 40.9 million
Manchester - 28.1 million
London Stansted - 28.0 million
London Luton - 16.4 million
Edinburgh - 14.4 million
Birmingham - 11.5 million
Bristol - 9.9 million
Glasgow - 7.4 million
Belfast International - 6.0 million
Newcastle - 4.8 million
Liverpool - 4.2 million
Leeds Bradford - 4.0 million
East Midlands - 3.9 million
London City - 3.4 million
And here is another
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The six runways were to never be built
Credit: Google Earth