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Concorde jet moves to temporary NYC home
By RICHARD PYLE, Associated Press Writer
Fri Dec 22, 6:51 PM ET

NEW YORK - A Concorde jetliner that is a featured attraction at New York's Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum arrived Friday at its temporary new home in Brooklyn.

The sleek white supersonic aircraft was moved by barge to historic Floyd Bennett Field, according to Intrepid museum officials. The plane will be open to visitors there during an 18-month rebuilding of the Intrepid's Hudson River pier.

The barge towed the plane to the end of the field's seaplane ramp, said museum spokeswoman Suzanne Halpin. From there, the Concorde was lifted by crane onto a runway and towed, on its own wheels, to the new location.

The one-time Mach 2 flier is the last major item to vacate Pier 86 in Manhattan, where the historic aircraft carrier USS Intrepid had been docked since it became a floating museum in 1982. The Intrepid was moved Dec. 6 to a Bayonne, N.J., shipyard for an extensive overhaul. It was joined last week by the USS Growler, a 1960s-vintage missile submarine.

Museum officials said the renovation of the 64-year-old World War II carrier and the rebuilding of the Hudson River dock should take 18 months to two years.

The 203-foot Concorde jet is known as Alpha Delta. It once held the trans-Atlantic speed record of 2 hours, 53 minutes, set in 1996.

The world's only supersonic transport, the Concorde began flying commercially in 1969 but never turned a profit for the joint British-French company that designed and built it. Its financial problems worsened after a French Concorde crashed near Paris in 2000, killing 109 people, and the planes were retired from service in 2003.

Floyd Bennett Field is named for a pilot who had flown Admiral Richard E. Byrd, a polar explorer, over the North Pole in 1926. It opened in 1931 as New York City's municipal airport and was used by such aviation pioneers as Wiley Post, Amelia Earhart and Howard Hughes.

Today, the field is used primarily by police and fire helicopters, advertising blimps and aviation exhibitions.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061222/ap_ ... d_concorde