Air France flies oldest of its Concordes to Smithsonian CHANTILLY, Va. (AP) =97 Air France turned the oldest of its Concordes over= to=20 the Smithsonian Institution Thursday for display near Washington's Dulles=20 International Airport. The 27-year-old aircraft, once seen as the future of= =20 passenger air travel, made the last of its 6,967 trips when it flew from=20 Paris to Dulles. The Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum already is home to= =20 the Wright Brothers' plane and the airplane Charles Lindbergh flew solo=20 across the Atlantic. The first of Air France's five Concordes went into=20 service in January 1976. Its inaugural flight from Paris included stops in= =20 Dakar, Senegal, and Rio de Janiero, Brazil, and it remained in service for= =20 17,824 flight hours. "It was the ultimate flight experience, not just=20 because it broke the sound barrier but also because it had its own=20 distinctive atmosphere," said Air France chairman Jean-Cyril Spinetta. "The= =20 thing that handicapped its whole career was not being able to fly over land= =20 because of the sonic booms," said Don Lopez, deputy director of the=20 Smithsonian. The aircraft, developed in the 1960s as a joint project of the= =20 British and French governments, saw only limited production. The Smithsonian will exhibit the plane inside the massive Stephen F.=20 Udvar-Hazy Center, a display hangar the museum is building near Dulles,=20 some 25 miles west of Washington. It will house key elements of the=20 museum's collection that cannot fit in the existing building on the=20 National Mall. The Concorde will go on public display Dec. 15, when the=20 facility is opened to mark the centennial of the Wright Brothers' first=20 powered flight at Kill Devil Hills, N.C. A large space has already been=20 roped off to accommodate the Concorde's 204-foot-long fuselage and huge,=20 swept-back wings. It will be displayed near the U.S. Army Air Corps' Enola= =20 Gay, the B-29 Superfortress that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima,=20 Japan, in 1945. Paris-to-Washington Concorde service began in May 1976, but= =20 those flights were suspended in November 1982. Service between Paris and=20 New York ended last month. The aircraft's limited operations schedule was=20 completely disrupted after the July 25, 2000, crash of an Air France=20 Concorde on takeoff from Paris, which led to the suspension of all Concorde= =20 operations for 13 months. British Airways plans to retire its seven=20 Concordes in October. *************************************************** The owner of Roger's Trinbago Site/TnTisland.com Roj (Roger James) escape email mailto:ejames@xxxxxxxxx Trinbago site: www.tntisland.com Carib Brass Ctn site www.tntisland.com/caribbeanbrassconnection/ Steel Expressions www.mts.net/~ejames/se/ Mas Site: www.tntisland.com/tntrecords/mas2003/ Site of the Week: http://www.natalielaughlin.com/ TnT Webdirectory: http://search.co.tt *********************************************************