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Supersonic Jet Will Soon Be Sailing Into Brooklyn More than three years after supersonic commercial air travel came to an end, one of the Concorde SST's that flew several times a week between Europe and the United States is scheduled to be temporarily housed at Floyd Bennett Field. The jet coming to south Brooklyn had been on display on a barge next to the U.S.S. Intrepid since 2004. Last weekend, officials from the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum announced that the sleek 203-foot long aircraft, which had been on exhibit across from the U.S.S. Intrepid at Pier 86 on the Hudson River in Manhattan, announced that the SST would be moved by barge to Jamaica Bay and unveiled at the former airfield, which is controlled by the National Park Service and part of the Gateway National Recreation Area, a few miles southwest of Canarsie, in the coming weeks. The operators of the Aviator Sports and Recreation who opened the recreational center at the airfield last month, agreed to pay for transporting the needle-nosed SST to Brooklyn for 18 months, while the Intrepid aircraft carrier, which houses the museum, is relocated while the pier undergoes renovations. According to The New York Times, British Airways, owner of the Concorde, wanted the aircraft to remain in the city where it could continue serving as a billboard for the carrier. Tom Wells, the general manager for the recreation complex, told the Times that the SST would arrive on the barge at the east side of Floyd Bennett and dock near a ramp that extends into the bay where it will be transferred to land then towed across a runway to a nearby, vacant hangar. In a statement to the Times, Congressman Anthony Weiner, who is the latest in a succession of local elected officials opposed to the SST and its twice a day noise that unnerved south Brooklyn and Queens residents for 26 years, quipped when he heard about the move, "So long as they don't fly it into Floyd Bennett, I'm cool with it. I have many constituents who want to see it, just like there were lots of people eager to see King Kong after he's fallen off the Empire State Building." Thousands of Brooklyn and Queens residents were outraged in 1976 when the federal government sanctioned a 16-month trial period for the SST to operate at JFK airport that paved the way for nearly three decades of a 30-second, twice-a-day clamor that regularly set off car alarms and rattled windows.
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