The Concorde Simulator Experience

Probably one of the most famous noses in aviation history.

More than a year ago, John heard about the operational Concorde simulator in the UK. The only one in the world. He enquired and was advised a new batch of available slots for participate in the day long experience would be made available in a few months.

John twiddled his thumbs and waited patiently. Within a day of being notified that there were slots available, John bought his ticket. Our airfares were bought the following day. We then set to and planned a holiday around the experience. A three week jaunt through the southwest of the UK, since, in John’s firm conviction, the simulator was in Bristol. Because that was where all the British Airways pilots were trained.

May 1st 2025 finally rolled round and, in the midst of an incredible rainstorm that threatened to drown Christchurch, we flew off to better weather on the other side of the planet.

We followed our itinerary along the south coast right out to Lands End (a bit naff) then made a beeline to Bath where we would rest and nip into Bristol, about 20 mins down the road, to do the Concorde Experience.

TWO NIGHTS BEFORE the booked experience, John was actually rather excited (a very rare phenomenon) and was examining his paperwork as he anticipated his bucket list date coming up. To his utter horror (and mine when he plucked up courage to tell me), we were on the wrong side of the country. Brooklands Museum, where the simulator experience operates, is in Weybridge near London, literally the next suburb over from where we had stayed when we first arrived in the UK!

I think you can imagine the strong silent look I gave him….

A new take on a cross country sprint - until we hit the M25 🥴

We had to make the best of what we had. We kept our three nights accommodation in Bath but hurriedly booked an accommodation in Weybridge. The next morning, we set sail early and completed a whistlestop exploration tour of Bath before making our way back to London via a zig zag to check out Stonehenge from the road and lunch in Avebury so I could walk around the massive stone circles there (This was my bucket list item for the holiday and was meant to be done in a leisurely day out from Bath). Four hours later, we crawled along in rush hour traffic on the biggest carpark in London - the M25 - but eventually got to our accommodation.

The next day dawned warm and full of anticipation. We drove over to the museum and waited to be admitted on our special tickets. There were five people who would fly, most accompanied by their plus ones (including me).

We were treated like royalty all day. We were given a brief tour of the museum and heard about its background as a car racetrack in the 1920s before becoming the home of Vickers Aviation with new aircraft manufactured onsite and lifting off from the centre of the race track to their new destinations – right through WW11, even after being bombed.

In the historical clubrooms, we met our Concorde Captains and heard a little of their stories flying Concorde. We were offered coffee and cake (a truly English thing – actual cake – a Victoria Sponge).

The two captains had been on the first Concorde type rating course. They didn’t have a choice. They were new hires for the company. British Airways was having difficulty in getting current line pilots to choose to fly the Concorde. Some of the reasons the crew didn’t want to fly on the fleet were the lack of destinations and the lengthy time it took to get the type rating.

Incidently, talking about the Concorde fleet… The original plan was to build 200 but in the end only 20 were built. 10 British and 10 French. Eventually only 14 saw service, the others being prototype and pre-production models. 7 flew with British Airways and 7 flew for Air France. Surprisingly, two were built for Iran Air but the order was cancelled.

Definately not my photo!

Because no country in Europe wanted the Concorde travelling faster than the speed of sound passing over them (because of the double sonic boom causing damage to buildings and windows) – the only options were East Coast America destinations.

The usual bog standard type rating for airliners takes about three months. Concorde’s type rating took six months. So - six months without non taxable allowances was not appealing. It was worse for the first course attendees. It took nearly a year to get the type rating because of delays to the aircraft coming into service and training requirements.

All up, there were 134 pilots (only one was a woman) and 57 flight engineers for British Airways over Concorde’s time in service.

Three oldies

Soon, we were taken out to board a real Concorde on display. This specimen didn’t enter commercial service but was the first to take passengers supersonic – a bunch of daredevils prepared to be guinea pigs.

Because of how old we are, John and I had both toured through Concorde before when it came through Christchurch in April 1989 – just before it lost the upper portion of its rudder over the Tasman. We didn’t even know each other then. He was nosey tech crew and I was a nosey flight attendant. It was in the day when uniformed staff could wander around airside and each of us, with our crews, had got off our respective flights and sauntered across the tarmac to the Concorde and asked to board for a look round. I imagine nearly all of Air New Zealand’s air crew who passed through Christchurch that day toured through Concorde.

But I digress. Back to 2025. We entered Concorde through the small luggage/cargo area at the back of the aircraft and made our way forward, looking at display items before entering the passenger cabin. The overwhelming sensation, being a tall person, is how cramped the cabin is. We had to walk around in a stooped fashion. The windows are tiny and the cabin seats are very narrow. I think the aircraft was made for hobbits.

Apparently, Row 15 was never booked. As it was C.o.G for the aircraft, it meant that any last minute bookings could be added right up till departure as it wouldn’t make any difference to C.o.G for the flight.

We were invited to take a seat, and we were served either champagne or an elderflower drink and asked to sit back and relax and enjoy what happened next.

Aaaandd….. I can’t tell you what happened next. No photos or recordings were allowed, and I was specifically asked not to mention the next bit in this article. Nonetheless, it was fricken unexpected and fricken brilliant considering we were on an old aircraft firmly on the ground.

I probably won’t be hunted down and shot if I say that we got to experience what passengers felt and heard when flying across the Atlantic (without the boring bit in the middle). And, cheesily, the onboard experience ended with Queen’s song ‘Don’t stop me now’.

Before we left the aircraft, we got to check out the galley and the flight deck.

At this point John and his assigned Instructor, Captain Ian Smith, got to business in the flight deck as Ian got John to sit in the left seat and acquainted John with the layout of the flight controls and important instruments (no, not cellos, drums and tubas).

One really interesting thing about the flight deck was how long and narrow it was. There was a floor to ceiling long instrument panel (about 6 feet, I reckon) for the Flight Engineer to monitor. It weighed more than a ton. Something that is completely redundant on modern airliners. In fact, during the cruise, Concorde’s fuselage would grow by nearly 30cm (1 foot). It was most noticeable at the flight engineer's workstation where the panel would separate from the bulkhead. And this is a juicy little rumour - It is said that during the last supersonic flight of each Concorde the Flight Engineer dropped his hat into the space and on descending the hat would be permanently encased as the space closed up again.

Flight Engineers Instrument Panel (In the sim)

One rather important dial on the Flight Engineers panel was the radiometer. At altitudes around 50,000’ to 60,000', the atmosphere is very thin and the protective layers between the aircraft occupants and the sun were dramatically reduced. Skin cancer was a real concern and to this end, the radiometer that measured radiation was installed.

During high sunspot activity, if the readings became worrisome, the aircraft descended to a safer altitude below 47,000’

Once we disembarked, we had a good amount of time to roam around under the belly of the aircraft and see close up the engines and undercarriage.

John appreciating a magnificent undercarriage

And why is this such a big deal? Because the undercarriage is unique. Here’s an excerpt from Heritage Concorde…

Its large delta-wing requires a high angle of attack, which leads to a pitch angle on touchdown of 11 degrees. This requires the landing gear to be unusually strong due to the unusual loadings which it would have to cope with. This angle of attack caused another problem, it put the rearmost part of the engines nearest to the ground, and this required the legs to be long enough to stop them touching.

Concorde is equipped with a hydraulically operated retractable tricycle landing gear layout, with a nose gear consisting of two wheels and 2 main gears consisting of 4 wheels each. Separate from this configuration is a tail bumper gear consisting of 2 wheels, that is fitted to prevent any damage to the fuselage and engine nacelles, should the aircraft suffer too high an angle of attack during take-off or landing.

One interesting note about the main landing gear is that if both were to just swing up to be stowed away, they would hit each other and jam. The combined length of both undercarriages is greater than the distance between both undercarriage roots. This problem required that the undercarriage be first retracted vertically and then swung inwards to be tucked in the wing and fuselage belly.

A Concorde engine was also on display, and OMG! It’s tiddly, especially when part of the size is taken up by the afterburner. For such a powerful engine, I honestly expected something so much bigger. So, there you go, fellas, size doesn’t matter after all!

The afterburner is the unit attached to the rear (on the left of the engine)

Before we knew it, it was lunchtime and we were escorted back to the clubrooms and taken to the office of Sir Barnes Wallis (inventor of the bouncing bomb in WW11) for a rather posh three course meal. It was quite a convivial time as the Concorde pilots shared stories of their time flying the aircraft. We even heard the REAL reasons why Concorde crashed in 2000 (yes! 25 years ago!). Mike Bannister (Chief Pilot of British Airways Concorde fleet) discusses the crash in his book – Concorde.

A rather fancy pants lunch .

Immediately after lunch, we were taken to the Simulator building. Here’s a blurb from Brookland Museum’s website about the simulator…

The Simulator was located at the British Aircraft Corporation's training headquarters at Filton, Bristol. Air France had their own Concorde simulator and this was based at the Aéroformation training school in Toulouse. The British Simulator stood on a motion system comprising of six electrically controlled hydraulic jacks. The jacks allowed for six axes of motion: pitch, roll, yaw, heave, sway and surge.

Originally the view out of the cockpit windows was generated by a closed-circuit TV system, which consisted of a camera moving over 3 large model landscapes that were mounted vertically on the wall of an adjacent room. In 1987 the Simulator had undergone a visual system upgrade, at a further cost of £3 million, and which brought it in line with all the best training systems around the World. The upgraded Simulator featured a panoramic visual system which gave pilots a 150° by 40° view of projected, computer-generated images. The updates to the system vastly increased the scope of the landscape that it was possible to fly over. The original Simulator setup was limited to a single airport and surrounding scenery of the large models, and the new system enabled pilots to 'fly' to many of the major airports around the world.

The one and only operational Concorde Simulator. No longer on its legs but screwed safely to the floor.

John would be second to fly. I could positively feel him vibrating with anticipation. 45 minutes later, it was his turn, and I followed into the cramped simulator to record his flight. The flight deck is so small that John had to practically fold himself into the seat. Prior to the actual flights, John was given quite a condensed and impressive training session so he could make the most of the flights.

One of the things peculiar to Concorde was the renowned countdown before take – off thrust was applied – the famous ‘3 – 2- 1- NOW’ phrase. It actually has a valid reason to be said. It allowed the flight engineer to start the stopwatch for the two minute afterburn on take off. For noise abatement, once airborne, the afterburners were turned off and not reengaged until above the Bristol Channel. Many people we talked to in Cornwall and Devon said they could remember the distinct sonic boom (a two part boom) as Concorde went supersonic.

When the tech crew were about to redeploy the afterburners after take off, they would transmit the countdown – ‘3 -2 – 1 – NOISE’ to the passenger cabin to warn the passengers they were about to feel a kick in the pants. As one passenger wrote – ‘the power experienced as the afterburners kicked in was visceral!’

After take off, afterburners were only employed to get the aircraft to 1.7 Mach and then turned off.

John was about to get the opportunity to utter that historical phrase.

Here’s John’s thoughts on his flight…

I flew the aircraft with the lovely Captain Ian Smith. I was given a choice of airports – and I chose Sydney and JFK. Both flights were under several bridges and many take-off and landings. I even had an emotional moment when opening up the thrust levers for the first take-off! (My thought was – I’m flying the Concorde!)

The handling felt largely conventional. However, the aircraft has unique flying characteristics. It doesn't have flaps or a horizontal stabilizer. The delta wing is inefficient for flying at low speed but great for high speed cruise. Therefore, at low speed it felt sluggish, and I had to really work the yoke. Because it is not possible to add flaps to increase lift a high angle of attack is needed. The lift is generated from large vortices originating at the sharp ogival leading edge of the wing, rolling over the top of it. This vortex lift increase is non-linear and produces a lot of drag as well. This of course requires the Concorde nose to be lowered for approach to 12.5° (5° for take-off.).

Alas, all good things come to an end, and it was time for John to pass the yoke to the next excited client and exit the simulator. His instructor came out, too, and gave John a certificate of his achievement. After a mutual hug and manly handshake, we said our goodbyes and left. We had the option to fully explore the huge museum - on a scale of Auckland’s MOTAT – but we had to cross the country once more, back to Bath to resume our holiday.

Bucket List item ticked off!

This smile stayed on John’s face for the rest of the day.

The drive back was a more pleasant 2.5 hour sprint and all the way, John was unusually effusive in his chatter about how amazing the whole experience had been.

He was definitely not disappointed.

You can check out the Concorde Experience here - https://www.brooklandsmuseum.com/concorde/concorde-events/fly-the-simulator