NEW YORK (AP) - After years of carrying thousands of celebrities and other well-heeled customers across the Atlantic, the Concorde arrived in New York Harbor on Tuesday like millions of previous European immigrants - on a boat.
But this immigrant's destination was not Ellis Island; the 88-ton British Airways supersonic jetliner is the newest and most exotic addition to the aircraft collection at the Intrepid Sea Air Space Museum.
The sleek, white plane, glistening in the morning sunshine, dwarfed the barge that carried it through New York Harbor on a cold and blustery morning. It glided up the harbor under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, past the Statue of Liberty, in the manner of previous European immigrants, before docking alongside the museum.
Ceremonies to welcome the new addition were slated for later in the day at the riverfront museum.
Rather than sharing space on the World War II aircraft carrier's flight deck, the aircraft will occupy its own barge next to the Intrepid pier. The retired destroyer USS Edson has been moved to the Brooklyn Navy Yard to make room for it.
The Concorde, the world's only supersonic commercial transport, was a joint British-French endeavor that ended earlier this year when both governments retired the planes after 27 years, during which they were heavily subsidized and never turned a profit.
Full of promise when it began flying in January 1976, the droop-nosed Concorde entranced aviation buffs and was popular with jet setters who liked the novelty of arriving in New York earlier than they left London. Its ear-blasting takeoffs made it less popular with people living near airports.
The era of supersonic commercial flight collapsed after an Air France Concorde crashed on takeoff in Paris in July 2000, killing 113. France halted all Concorde service last May and the British followed in October.
For the Intrepid, which has carefully built a varied collection of military aircraft over the past 20 years, getting one of the 18 Concordes still in existence is akin to the Metropolitan Museum of Art acquiring a new van Gogh painting.
``We're thrilled,'' said Denise Nash, spokeswoman for the museum.
She said the Intrepid plans a new exhibit built around the Concorde, focusing on the history of trans-Atlantic travel.
It also will be the most important civilian aircraft on display at the Intrepid, sharing top billing with the Lockheed A-12, the forerunner to the Air Force's needlenosed SR-71 Blackbird high-altitude spy plane.
``The A-12 and the Concorde will represent the `tactical to practical' transition of military technology to commercial aviation,'' said Nash.
The Intrepid's chief executive, retired Marine Corps Col. Tom Tyrrell, said earlier that the loan of the Concorde will enhance the floating museum's role as a ``global destination for aviation history.''
Another British Airways Concorde is already at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, and Air France donated one to Smithsonian Institution's new National Air and Space Museum being built at Dulles International Airport outside Washington.
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