Baden-Baden (Germany), June 24: After breaking the sound barrier on thousands of flights across the Atlantic Ocean, one of Air France's five Concordes today begins a journey where no supersonic jet has ever gone before – down the Rhine river to take up residence beside its sister craft, the Tupolev TU-144. The Concorde F-BVFB will roll away from its gate at Paris Charles de Gaulle for the last time early this morning and head out on a final supersonic loop over the Atlantic before a scheduled 12:45 P.M (1615 IST) landing at the Karlsruhe-Baden-Baden airport in southwestern Germany.
At the airport, a team of mechanics will begin removing its wing tips, nose, tail and tail cone to prepare it for a trip down the Rhine river to the Sinsheim Auto & Technik museum - a privately owned and funded fantasy world of modern technology ranging from an original corvette and an 1952 oldsmobile "rocket" to steam engines, world war II-era fighter planes and a jumbo jet.
There, the F-BVFB, which joined Air France on April 8, 1976, will take up residence beside its erstwhile rival, the Soviet-built Tupolev TU-144 supersonic jet, known in the west as the "Concordski". The museum boasts it will be the only place where both jets will be on display side by side.
Unlike the Concorde, which Air France flew for 27 years before retiring its fleet of five supersonic jets last month, the TU-1 44 flew for less than 10 years, before being retired in 1978. Bureau Report