iscover
BA Concordes fly about 100 hours each a month, roughly twice the hours of their Air France cousins. BA are well placed due to their aggressive Concorde marketing philosophy and the fact that the bulk of supersonic transatlantic traffic is on the Blue Riband New York/London corridor.
A Day In The Life
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Roger Dixon Concorde Captain
There are Captains and there are Captains. Generally, the bigger the aircraft, the greater the status and remuneration of its Captain. Then, there is the Concorde Captain. He can only work with two airlines, he would almost always have to be either British or French and he would fly the world’s only supersonic airliner and no doubt, deep down, he would carry to work with him a feeling of pride and expertise probably unequalled on any other flight deck.
Concorde is that sort of aircraft. It is unique. It is not new. In fact much of its technology is downright geriatric. Yet, it is Number One in the world’s order of airliners. The giant wide bodies may gladly lay claim to the seat/kilometre economy race while the latest regionals are quiet enough to almost go unnoticed yet when Concorde takes the taxiway, just watch the crowds form and admire what is truly one of this century’s greatest engineering achievements.
I first remember reading about the initial concept of Concorde as a lad just entering high school, I remember its early flights as a young man, almost a decade later. Therefore, the year or so of work that went into planning our SST sortie for this article indeed seems a short time by comparison. Our Concorde Captain this day is Roger Dixon. When I was that schoolboy so long ago reading about the future supersonic airliners in Flying Review (Ah, remember!) Roger was in the RAF flying Shackleton ASW aircraft. On leaving the air force in 1967 he joined the then BOAC to fly 707s. This inevitably led to the right seat of a 747 and finally, in 1977, to Concorde. British Airways had at that stage only been operating the aircraft for a year and so today Roger Dixon can genuinely feel that he is a real part· of the closely-knit BA Concorde team.
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