Concorde jet sails to new home at New York museum ( 2003-11-26 16:07) (Agencies)
A supersonic Concorde jet sailed up the Hudson River Tuesday to its
final resting place"The plane left JFK Airport on a barge Tuesday morning after
its engines were removed and the remaining fuel was drained to prepare it for
the public display.
When the 62.2-meter-long, 88-ton jet whisked passengers across the
Atlantic Ocean in just three hours, round-trip tickets cost over 10,000
dollars. Visitors, however, will soon be able to climb aboard for the price of
admission to the museum.
The Concorde will become part of a permanent new exhibit and officially
open to the public next spring, the museum's chief executive officer Col.
Tom Tyrrell said in a statement.
The Concorde retired from British Airways last month after 27 years of
service and its pals' service in Air France halted in May. Both airlines said
the service was too expensive to operate, and the Concordes' image has
never recovered from a crash outside Paris in 2000 that killed 113 people.
The Concorde made an aviation history as the world's only supersonic
passenger aircraft, cruising at more than twice the speed of sound, and at
an altitude of up to 60,000 feet (about 18, 200 meters).
In addition to the Intrepid museum, British Airways selected six other
sites to receive Concordes, including the Museum of Flight in
Seattle.
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