Prince Harry lands in New York

UPDATED 1:45 p.m.

Britain's Prince Harry is in New York, marking his first official visit to the United States with a stop at the World Trade Center site, where he laid a wreath with a handwritten note and bowed his head for several minutes at a spot overlooking the Sept. 11 memorial.

The 24-year-old prince also walked around the World Trade Center site and looked at the plans for rebuilding it. At one point he asked an official, "Big question -- when is this supposed to be finished?"

The prince was to visit a garden memorializing Sept. 11 victims and a veterans center in Manhattan later Friday.

He then spoke to relatives of four 9/11 victims and toured the site and a firehouse across from ground zero.

CBS 6's sister station in New York City, CBS 2, confirmed earlier in the day Prince Harry had landed safely at John F. Kennedy International Airport, with his British Airways flight touching down shortly after 11 a.m.

After his stop at WTC, he will formally name the British Garden in downtown Hanover Square to honor the 67 British victims of the terrorist attack.

Harry also will visit the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Manhattan, where he will tour the prosthetics facilities and a post-traumatic stress disorder clinic.

A British soldier who lost both legs in an explosion in Afghanistan will accompany Harry on his two-day trip to New York.

Prince Harry is the younger son of the late Princess Diana and Prince Charles. He is third in line to the British throne.

(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)