In Plane View

“It’s moving pretty fast,” said the elderly gentleman next to me. Here we were, two strangers standing a few feet apart on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, taking in a classic New York moment. Out on the river, a tugboat guided a British Airways Concorde toward the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where it was due to receive a restoration. In its heyday, the passenger plane would have made the four-and-a-half-mile journey from Pier 86 to Brooklyn in a mere twelve seconds, what with its cruise speed of 1,350 miles per hour, double the speed of sound. I later gleaned that the trip took over four hours to complete, substantially longer than the aircraft’s average Transatlantic flight time.

The Concorde’s first successful test flight in 1969 marked the culmination of the Jet Age, with commercial flights launching seven years later; although sonic booms were a real disturbance, it was ultimately a combination of technological, economic, and political factors that permanently grounded the fleet of twenty operational planes in 2003. It may have been the end of an era for fans such as Bernard Tschumi, who told the Times that the decision represented “a loss of nerve.” “A loss” is right. I was engrossed in a book when my new friend approached me and asked for the name of the twentieth-century relic, which had escaped him. We watched the Concorde’s gleaming, unmistakable fuselage slide by the familiar backdrop of lower Manhattan with the steady deliberateness of a dolly shot. It occurred to me to try and get a closer look down in DUMBO. The anonymous tipster wished me luck as I dashed to the nearest Citi Bike station. I had a plane to catch.