Brooklyn, NY - Concorde Supersonic Jet to Travel to the Borough, but Not by Air

Brooklyn, NY - A Concorde supersonic jet that once flew to and from Kennedy Airport in Queens and has floated at the edge of Manhattan for two years is now headed to its third borough: Brooklyn.

Officials of the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, where the Concorde has been on display on a barge, said that they had arranged to have it temporarily parked outside a new recreational center at Floyd Bennett Field, a defunct airport a few miles from Kennedy. The operators of the center, Aviator Sports and Recreation, agreed to pay to move the plane from alongside Pier 86 on the West Side and back again in about 18 months, that is how long the U.S.S. Intrepid, the aircraft carrier that houses the museum, is expected to be away while the pier is rebuilt. It will be towed to Bayonne, N.J., for an overhaul.

The 203-foot-long Concorde, which sits across from the Intrepid, has been one of the museum’s most popular exhibits since it arrived in 2004. The Concorde would be towed on its barge to a ramp that extends into Jamaica Bay on the east side of Floyd Bennett Field, then, a crane will lift it onto a runway and, if its tires can be inflated and its wheels still turn after two years of sitting idle, it will be towed across a runway to the hangar that has been converted to house Aviator’s ice-skating rinks and basketball courts.