Flight engineer reveals what it was really like to operate supersonic jet Concorde

(CNN) — Concorde flight engineer Warren Hazelby gets chills recalling his first supersonic flight from London to New York in 2002.

Hazelby remembers stepping onto the flight deck and taking it all in. The interior was smaller than the Boeing 707s and 747s he’d worked on for much of his career, but the controls were more complex.

Hazelby felt a mixture of excitement and apprehension as he took his seat behind the pilots, facing the colossal panel of knobs and dials that controlled Concorde’s aircraft systems, engines, fuel and hydraulics.

Despite traveling faster than any other commercial passenger plane in history, Concorde was never updated with 21st century technology. The computer responsible for handling this complex equipment was human.

As the flight engineer, it was Hazelby’s job to operate the controls – to make the adjustments needed to ensure the aircraft safely punched through the sound barrier to reach speeds of over Mach 2.

That first day, Hazelby looked at the floor to ceiling panel and felt “very nervous.” Flight engineer colleagues had warned him Concorde duties were all consuming – he’d barely have time to eat or drink a cup of coffee for the duration of the flight.

But while six months of training on a Concorde simulator – and two decades as a flight engineer on other aircraft – went some way to preparing Hazelby for this logistical challenge, nothing could compare him for how thrilling it all was.

Hazelby grew up plane-watching near Concorde’s birthplace in southwest England. He began his career as a 16-year-old engineering apprentice for British Airways forerunner BOAC. He admired Concorde for years and then, finally, he found himself behind the controls of a supersonic jet.

“The first time you go through the sound barrier, that’s quite an experience,” Hazelby tells CNN Travel today.

And despite the nerves, despite the stress, despite the all-consuming nature of the job, Hazelby discovered an unbeatable satisfaction which came with fulfilling this high pressure role.

“Concorde was the ultimate aircraft for a flight engineer to work on,” says Hazelby. “When you get everything right, and Concorde performs well, then you get a huge feeling of achievement. At the end of the flight, you’re exhausted, but you’ve got through all those different stages, and got the passengers safely to their destination in three and a quarter hours. It felt quite special when you got to New York.”

The brains behind the plane

Today, when Hazelby tells people he used to be a flight engineer on board Concorde, he gets blank looks.

“Everybody’s heard of pilots. No one’s ever heard of a flight engineer,” says Hazelby, who also worked on Lockheed Tristar L1011s prior to his stint on Concorde.

“And even people who’ve heard of a flight engineer are not really quite sure what they are or what they do,” Hazelby adds. “They think the guy sitting behind the pilots is probably the navigator or something.”

This confusion’s not helped by the fact the role’s been obsolete for over 20 years – computers have now fully taken over the flight engineer’s duties, at least in the commercial aviation sphere.

Still, even back in the 1970s and ‘80s, flight engineers were the more low key members of an airplane crew – the role never had the flashy connotations of a pilot, or the glamor associated with flight attendants.

But flight engineers were crucial in those early decades of jet travel, responsible for monitoring the aircraft systems throughout the flight.

Then, in the late 1980s, the landscape started to shift. Newer commercial aircraft models started to incorporate computer technology which covered the flight engineer’s job. In the 1990s, this change accelerated.

“Boeing started making the 747-400, which was the first aircraft designed for long haul that had no flight engineers,” says Hazelby. “That was a big deal. As soon as that was introduced, and British Airways started buying them, then our numbers declined.”

Hazelby saw this change happen up close – in the ‘90s, he was British Airways’ chief flight engineer. The around 600 flight engineers he oversaw at the beginning of the decade had drastically decreased in number by the decade’s end.

But even as the 21st century rolled around and the flight engineer profession hung in the balance, there was one aircraft that still relied on in-flight technical wizards: Concorde.

While aircraft manufacturers were constantly updating and upgrading aircraft like the Boeing 747, Concorde remained largely unchanged from its 1970s heyday. Flight engineers were crucial to the operation.

And on top of that, Concorde was a “dynamic” aircraft, as Hazelby puts it, operating unlike any other commercial plane.

“It’s the most complex passenger aircraft ever made and so there were more things for the flight engineer to do on Concorde than any other aircraft,” he explains.

On board Concorde

Hazelby joined the Concorde crew as an experienced flight engineer, but he soon realized that doing the job on a supersonic jet was a whole other ball game.

“On the 747, once you took off – once you’d done the after takeoff checks and got into cruise – the aircraft pretty much ran itself. You just had to deal with the navigation, a little bit on the fuel system, but it was pretty much automated for the rest of it,” Hazelby says.

“On Concorde – because all the time, we were changing speed, changing altitude – there was never a phase where there was very little to do. There was always something for the flight engineer to do. Everything needed to be turned off and on, to be monitored. You had to watch the temperature gauges, you had to make sure there were no fuel leaks, you had to make sure everything was working correctly.”

That’s why colleagues warned Hazelby that Concorde flight engineer duties were all-consuming, and food would become an afterthought.

“They said that after about a year, if you could actually eat something during the flight you were doing well. Because you either had things to do, or you were thinking, ‘What’s the next thing coming up? What should I be doing next?’” says Hazelby.

“You were really getting to grips with the job if you felt you could have five, 10 minutes to eat a meal. That was you starting to feel more confident. And although you were eating a meal, you were still scanning all the instruments the whole time, so you were still working during your meal.”

As the on-board technical expert, if there was any kind of issue mid-flight, it was the flight engineer’s job to try and resolve the problem.

“You had to either switch that component off, or possibly switch the standby system on. Or if it was a leak – obviously a fuel leak or hydraulically – you had to diagnose that,” Hazelby recalls.

For much of the flight, the flight engineer would sit at a 90-degree angle behind the Concorde pilot and first officer, facing a monitoring panel. But the flight engineer’s seat was also moveable, and during take-off “the seat could swing forward so you were facing forward, so you were virtually in between the two pilots,” explains Hazelby.

This is because take-off was the most “critical time,” he says. During take-off, the flight engineer needed to closely monitor Concorde’s engine gauges, as well as the aircraft’s speed.

“Concorde had these very complicated wings. They’re very thin, which you need for high speed flight, but they don’t produce any lift on the ground, which is a real problem for takeoff, obviously,” says Hazelby. “So what you need for takeoff is a lot of speed. And so the engine power on takeoff was absolutely critical.”

Teamwork in the flight deck

On board Concorde, Hazelby quickly learned that the pilot, first officer and flight engineer worked as “a very close-knit team.”

“Much more so than on some of the other aircraft,” he says.

The trio would sync their watches as soon as their shift began (“Everything had to be tied to the second,” explains Hazelby.). Throughout the flight, each member of the flightdeck relied on the other.

“With the Concorde, pilots couldn’t do certain things without the flight engineer, and the flight engineer couldn’t do certain things without the pilot,” says Hazelby. “So you had to work very much as a close-knit team, and make sure everybody was in the loop about what was going on when.”

The smaller pool of Concorde employees also led to a “very personal fleet.”

“On other fleets, like the 747 – because the fleets were so big, and there were so many crew – you might fly with someone and then never fly with them again the rest of your career. But on Concorde, everybody flew with everybody regularly, because there were so few of us. So you got to know each other very well,” says Hazelby.

While there wasn’t much opportunity for personal conversations on board – there was too much to do – crew would often go out for dinner upon arrival in New York and catch up.

These dinners were soundtracked by laughter. Hazelby describes the relationship between Concorde flight engineers and pilots as defined by mutual respect, with a generous sprinkling of good humor.

“Because our roles were slightly different, there was always banter between flight engineers and pilots. But it was all very good natured,” says Hazelby. “All flight engineers know at least five pilot jokes. We used to joke that flight engineers weren’t rich enough to get divorced – but the pilots seemed to go through quite a few different marriages. That was one of the old jokes.”

Another long-running gag, recalls Hazelby, stemmed from the fact that historically, Concorde’s captain, first officer and flight engineer couldn’t all eat the same meal mid-flight “in case we all got food poisoning.”

“Being the most senior, the captain got first choice – so the joke was the captain always went for the steak. The first officer was the second most senior, so he went for the lamb. And then the poor old engineer always had the chicken – which wasn’t always true, but that was the joke,” says Hazelby, chuckling.

In turn, pilots ribbed flight engineers about their under-the-radar status and the fact “no one had ever heard of us,” says Hazelby.

“But we also got a lot of respect from the pilots, especially when things went wrong. We could give the captain lots of technical advice about what we should do next.”

Former Concorde pilot John Tye, who was among a group of former Concorde pilots who spoke to CNN Travel about their experiences in 2023, calls the flight engineer a “vital” member of the flightdeck team.

Tye also points out that while comparatively few people experienced what it was like to travel on Concorde, and even fewer know the feeling of piloting this super-fast aircraft – the experience of sitting in the flight engineer seat is rarer still. While there were once hundreds of flight engineers working at British Airways, there were only ever 57 who operated the airline’s Concorde aircraft.

The flight engineer, as Tye puts it, “was often under-appreciated and recognized, yet his skills and knowledge formed the backbone of every supersonic operation.”

Many former Concorde employees remain close today, often hosting get-togethers at Brooklands Aviation Museum in the south of England, which is home to one of the 18 surviving Concorde aircraft.

Celebrity Encounters

Prior to his stint on Concorde, Hazelby had enjoyed the odd brush with celebrity: on a number of occasions he’d worked on airplanes ferrying members of the British Royal Family – including the Queen and Princess Diana – across the globe.

But Concorde’s steep prices meant celebrity passengers were much more common. And while flight engineers were usually too busy to mingle, on charter flights famous faces were impossible to miss.

“One of the most fascinating flights I did was two weeks before Christmas. It was a Barbados trip and we had 54 passengers on board – and every single person on board was famous, which was quite bizarre,” says Hazelby.

Among the famous faces were Mick Jagger and Bianca Jagger. Hazelby recalls a memorable – albeit slightly awkward – interaction with the latter. Bianca Jagger was waiting in the line for the bathroom, and Hazelby cut in front.

“I said, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t be off the flight deck for very long. So I’m going to have to push you in front of you,’” he recalls. “That’s my claim to fame – pushing in front of Bianca Jagger to get into the loo.”

As well as celebrity sightings, Concorde crews also enjoyed spotting natural wonders.

“We couldn’t really see much out the front of the aircraft in the flight deck, but you could see out the side windows, and once you got to 60,000 feet you could see the curvature of the earth,” says Hazelby.

“And if it was a night flight, if you were very lucky you could see the Northern Lights. Once you get to that sort of altitude, the sky is a really dark blue, so it’s quite a wonderful experience.”

Hazelby also never tired of the fact that, because Concorde flew so quickly, on evening flights from London to New York, the sun would appear to set and then rise again.

“As we accelerated towards New York, we were going faster than the Earth rotations and the sun would come back up again,” he recalls. “You’d actually see the sunrise in the West, which is not something that many people have seen.”

The final flight

For Hazelby, working as the flight engineer for the last ever Concorde flight in November 2003 was “very emotional.” He’d hoped to operate the controls of the supersonic jet for a lot longer – in the end, Hazelby only had a year qualified on Concorde before British Airways retired the aircraft. Air France had grounded its Concorde aircraft some months previously.

Hazelby remembers driving to the airport that morning iin 2003, listening to the radio.

“The presenters were all talking about the last flight of Concorde. It was really weird, you know, thinking, ‘Oh, that’s me. They’re talking about me on the radio.’”

For its final flight, Concorde flew from London Heathrow to an airfield at Filton, near Bristol in southwest England, where its story began four decades previously.

Already a symbolic journey, this flight had extra significance for Hazelby.

“I was born in Southmead Hospital, in Filton,” he says. “Pure coincidence, but quite a bizarre one.”

Concorde flew over Southmead Hospital that day in November 2003.

“My uncle was suffering from cancer at the time and was actually in Southmead having treatment,” recalls Hazelby. “They wheeled his wheelchair out as we went over. He saw us go over. It was a very emotional day.”

After the Concorde landed for the final time, one of the pilots invited Hazelby and the rest of the crew to his house for dinner, where the group toasted Concorde into the early hours of the morning.

“It was a very special end to my flying career,” says Hazelby.

The Concorde aircraft that operated the final flight is now on display at the Aerospace Bristol Museum. Visitors can tour the aircraft, which was signed by passengers and crew in 2003. Hazelby’s name is among the signatures.

20 years later

In the lead up to Concorde’s final flight, Hazelby was interviewed in the Wall Street Journal about the demise of the flight engineer.

In the 2003 write-up Hazelby was optimistic – against the odds – about the future of his profession, predicting ultra long-haul jetliners might have a need for a flight engineer in the future.

“That hasn’t been the case,” reflects Hazelby today. “Aircraft’s virtually fully automated now.”

Hazelby’s long since reconciled to this fact his beloved career is a relic of the past.

“Being replaced by computers – that was on the cards for a good 10-15 years before my retirement,” he says. “It was something we had to live with.”

Some of Hazelby’s younger British Airways flight engineer colleagues retrained as pilots, while some older flight engineers took early retirement. A handful of former flight engineers became train drivers.

As for Hazelby, he remained at British Airways for several years, becoming head of air safety.

It’s now been over two decades since Hazelby sat in a flight deck, preparing an airplane for takeoff. Despite the time lapsed, Hazelby still has anxiety dreams that he’s en route to work on Concorde and running late to the airport.

The home he shares with his wife – a former British Airways flight attendant he met on the job – has Concorde photos and mementos on the wall. And Hazelby’s uniform still hangs proudly in his wardrobe.

Today, Hazelby and his wife travel a lot, making the most of their retirement. Sometimes, when he’s sitting on a delayed flight, listening to a pilot explaining, over the intercom, that “technical issues” are holding up departure, Hazelby can’t help but try and diagnose the problem. He’ll sit there, cycling through various scenarios and their solutions, wondering if a flight engineer could be the fix.

“I would have liked flight engineering to have gone on much longer,” says Hazelby. “But I guess technology was coming – and it had to end. So I think most people were fairly realistic. And to be the last flight engineer in British Airways was quite special, really, I’m quite proud of that fact.”

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