The Sun Rises in the West

Following on from John’s chance to fly the Concorde simulator at Brooklands Museum near London, he read the book written by Captain Mike Bannister, Chief Pilot for the British Airways Concorde fleet. This only deepened his love for this unique commercial aircraft, and he was keen for us to interview Mike for an article for the Pauwels Flying Scholarship. After squirrelling around to find his contact details, John finally sent an email to Mike. To his absolute thrill, Mike came back and agreed to the interview and suggested we have a Zoom meeting to complete it.

On an evening in early September, we sat in front of a computer and chatted to Mike for 80 minutes as he answered our questions. Here is a readable transcript of our conversation.

Captain Mike Bannister at the controls of Concorde

What is the first thing that comes to mind when people ask you about Concorde?

I think it was the Gee Whizz factor.  Twice the speed of sound. 1350 miles an hour, 23 miles a minute, a mile every 2 and ¾ seconds, faster than the earth rotates. You could take off in the autumn and spring  in pitch darkness and travel west so quickly, the sun would actually rise in the west. You could go to New York and back in a day. The aeroplane heats up so much it expands by 10cms.

All those things are fantastic but really, for me, it was the people who made it all so special. The 50,000 people in the UK who were involved in the creation and manufacturing of the aeroplane; the 2.5 million passengers who flew with British Airways; the taxpayers who paid for the research. Practically everyone in the UK was invested in the project. The interest the general public had was amazing. Not just in the UK and France but around the world. Eventually including the USA - 40,000 people turned out to see us when we visited Oklahoma City.

But of course, it was the 250 people at any given time who were directly involved with the operation of the planes. It wasn’t just the pilots; it was the flight attendants, engineers, check in agents, sales agents, baggage loaders, the cleaners and caterers etc. There were 250 of us in that Concorde family. We were very close. We may not have known everyone’s name, but we knew everyone by sight. It was amazing really. In British Airways - at the time, there were over 40,000 employees -  and we were this little group of 250. So, we were a family within a family, if you like.

 Below images… Left - demonstrating the stretch of the aircraft at the Flight Engineers station at Mach 2. Right - on the very last flight of each Concorde in 2003, the Flight Engineer stuck his cap in the gap at altitude for it to be permanently crushed in the aircraft for posterity. (At the bottom right of the righthand photo, you can see the direct comparison of the gap between Mach 2 (L) and stationary (R)).

When Concorde came online for British Airways, were you seconded into your role or did you volunteer?

I very much volunteered. Late each year, British Airways would advise how many crew they needed on each fleet for the following year, and each pilot would then bid to either stay where they were or bid to join a particular fleet. Depending on seniority a First Officer could bid to become Captain, either on their own fleet or another. You could prioritise your bids for first, second or third choice. If your bids weren’t successful, you’d stay where you were but if you were successful, sometime during the following year you would join a training course for your bid.

So…. I always wanted to be a pilot from age 7. I graduated as a pilot when I was 19 and was accepted by BOAC when I had just turned 20. But even then, I always wanted to be a Concorde pilot (Melissa here – The development of Concorde began with the signing of a treaty between England and France in 1962). When the opportunity arose to bid for Concorde, I was in the right seniority slot to have a viable bid - and I was successful. That was in 1976, the year Concorde went into service. But due to industrial action by the instructors, the course was rolled over to 1977. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. I was a co-pilot from 1977 till 1989. In the latter part of that time, I was also an instructor because co-pilots could also be instructors, with British Airways.

In 1989 I joined the management team and did a whole host of jobs. I did technical jobs, training jobs, people jobs, central internal jobs.

In 1995, the boss asked if I would like to be Chief Concorde Pilot. I thought about it for all of 0.5 seconds and said yes. I stayed in that role until Concorde was retired in 2003.

British Airways and Air France eying each other up

When John did the Concorde experience earlier this year, his Concorde pilots commented that it was hard to recruit tech crew for the Concorde fleet, despite its legendary status. Why was that?

Firstly, when you consider moving onto Concorde, you have to consider what drives people to become pilots or flight engineers. Is it the money? The desire to see the world? A desire to fly planes? A particular social life and lifestyle? If the desire was to fly planes, then Concorde was for you, but if you wanted to see the world, Concorde’s limited route wouldn’t be very satisfying.

There was also the issue of length of training when changing aircraft type. Normal jets such as the B737, B747 and so on took two months to get the type rating but Concorde took 6 months. And four months of that was a residential course in Bristol so it was a long time to be away from family.

From a renumeration point of view, you earned significantly less than on other fleets. The base pay was the same, but allowances were paid on an hourly basis and with Concorde flights being so short, you missed out on those allowances and incentive payments. Having said all that, we normally got 30 – 40 bids for a single crew slot when positions became available.

Concorde’s Control Panel and Yoke

The flight controls on Concorde were interesting with having no elevators or flaps. I guess the Delta wing and weight saving considerations created very clever aerodynamics?

Concorde was the first ‘fly be wire’ airliner. Many people think the A320 was the first commercial fly by wire aircraft but no, it was Concorde. Interestingly, the very first design for the Concorde had a side stick like the A320 and the first British Airways Concorde was actually fitted to have one, but it was never incorporated as the eventual decision was to have a conventional central yoke instead. 

For controls, Concorde didn’t have a tail plane. It had elevons. The elevons were a combined elevator and aileron - one surface that does both jobs. Taking commands for both requirements and producing the effect. Basically combining the pilot’s pitch and roll inputs into just one movement of the control surfaces.

The aerodynamic design of the wing was crucial to Concorde’s performance. It was able to be efficient (or acceptable is probably a better word) at low speed and very efficient at twice the speed of sound. There are very few wing forms that can do it, let alone efficiently enough and the most efficient wing form is the double delta, which Concorde had.

The first delta was the forward part of the wing; and the second delta was the rear of the wing. At low speed the forward part of the wing is generating vortex lift and the rear delta produces conventional lift at high speed.

Unlike a conventional sub sonic aircraft where you use flaps and slats to increase the curve of the wing to produce more lift when flying slowly, on Concorde we simply flew more nose up to make use of the vortex lift from the forward wing. No flaps, and no slats, were needed.

In conventional aircraft you are trimming the plane all the time. You have your trim wheels and what they do is move your control surfaces into the airflow and this produces drag. Which really isn’t an issue for subsonic flight but when you are flying at twice the speed of sound, you don’t want to introduce drag, you want to keep your control surfaces flush with the surface of the wing. But you still have to trim the aircraft from time to time and how we do that is move fuel around inside the aircraft.

Every aircraft has a centre of gravity and a centre of lift. The faster you go, the centre of lift moves backwards. In a conventional aircraft you counteract this by moving controls into the airstream, which increases drag. On Concorde, we didn’t want to do that. So, as the centre of lift moved rearwards with increasing speed, we moved the centre of gravity rearwards to match it.  We would pump 10 tonnes of fuel from near the nose to under the fin, to move the centre of gravity back to match the movement of the centre of lift. This way all flight control surfaces remain flush with the wing.

The A380 is the only other aircraft that I’m aware of that moves fuel around for trim purposes. Being an ultra long range plane it’s worth carrying the kit on board to be able to move the fuel around as it can save 3% of the fuel used. But on shorter range aircraft you have to balance the weight of the kit against the fuel savings which might only be 1%.

Flying Supersonic - check the speed and altitude!

Given how fast the Concorde flew, and how high, did it use the North Atlantic Tracks System that all other aircraft follow between Europe and North America?

No, Concorde had its own tracks. Each day there are about seven tracks plotted out by computer for aircraft to follow in each direction which takes into account weather conditions and headwinds. A 50 knot head wind could reduce fuel efficiency of a conventional aircraft by about 10% so it is worthwhile for subsonic aircraft to follow these tracks but for Concorde travelling at 1350 miles an hour, the 50 knot headwind would only have an impact of about 3%, so it was better for Concorde to simply go the shortest route between the two airports.

The shortest route between two points on a globe is a Great Circle Route. We had two westbound tracks and one eastbound. We would fly those great circle tracks irrespective of the weather on the day. (Melissa here - A great circle track across the Atlantic is the shortest possible route between two points on Earth's surface, appearing as a curved line on a flat map but as a straight line on a Gnomonic chart.)

We would take off from Heathrow, fly sub-sonically for 17 minutes until we were over the Bristol Channel, then we would accelerate to supersonic, route around the bottom of Ireland then join the great circle route direct to New York and only reducing speed about 250 miles off New York.

Captain’s view of the visor - (L) raised, (C) in transition, (R) lowered

When we travelled to the UK for John to do the Concorde Experience, we did a roadie around Cornwall, Devon and Somerset. Nearly every person we spoke to about Concorde said they used to be able to set their watches by the Concorde boom as it travelled down the Bristol Channel and out to the west. Can you tell us how that boom was managed?

When we accelerated and travelled at supersonic speed, we would leave behind us a sonic boom that was heard on the ground so we wouldn’t go supersonic until we were just off the coast going west. However, coming back home, as you decelerate, you push the sonic boom forward of the aircraft so we would have to reduce speed and be travelling subsonic about 55 nautical miles before we reached the coast.

Now, we knew about this boom when we went into service but what we didn’t know about was a secondary boom. What I described above was the primary boom, but under certain meteorological conditions a secondary boom occurred. This was when the boom was pushed upwards into the upper atmosphere. At about 100,000 feet it reflected off atmospheric changes and then bounced back to reach the ground. This only happened in the early years of service until we discovered it and then worked out how to avoid the secondary boom.

In the winter, eastbound, and in the summer, westbound, we would have to slow down in certain meteorological conditions to avoid the secondary boom. So, the people in Cornwall and Devon, if they did hear a boom, it was generally the secondary boom. There were occasions when meteorological conditions allowed the primary boom to get to land, too. But it wasn’t too disturbing. However, if they heard a really loud boom, we would tell them it was Air France!

When doing our walk around the Concorde we noted two tiny little wheels under the tail, presumably to cope with tail strike with the high angle of approach and take off. Did they get much use?

Very, very rarely. On approach, because the aircraft was so nose up, if the crew got it wrong, there was a chance of a touch down tail strike or even hitting the back of the engines. In the prototypes, it was a skid and during trial flights it was hit a few times. The consideration was that if the test pilots were hitting the skid, less experienced commercial pilots were more likely to strike the area - so two little wheels (about 1.3 feet across) were installed in place of the skid. But by the time the airline pilots got hold of the aircraft they knew a lot more about the aircraft and it became a matter of pride never to touch those wheels.

The tail wheels had to be changed every ten years because of time expiry but most of the wheels showed no use and no scuffing.

Concorde tail wheels - photo by Heritage Concorde

How did the engines cope travelling supersonic, was there a way to slow the speed of the air entering the engines?

The engine was situated in the rear half of the engine nacelle, about 11 feet from the front; and the air intake took up the front half. The air intake was designed to slow the airflow down. At 1350 mph, our engines could only accept air going at about 500 mph. If it’s coming in any faster into a jet engine, it’ll just backfire. So, the designers fitted a couple of ramps inside the air intake. There were one in front of the other. The first one would lower at the rear; and the second one would lower at the front. As the speed of the aircraft increased, the ramps would lower into the airstream, narrowing the air intake and creating shock waves compressing the air coming into the engine.

So, in 11 feet, the air coming into the engine is slowed and compressed from 1350 mph to about 500mph. It would go through the engine then the air would need to speed up again after it left the exhaust. This whole process of slowing and compressing the air, passing it through the engines and it speeding up again as it left the exhaust produced 50% of the thrust of the aircraft. At Mach 2, 50% thrust came from the engines and 50% thrust came from this process.

The first digital computers in aviation were the ones designed to control those ramps. However, they could also be controlled by the flight engineer if the two computers (main and back up) malfunctioned. The computers were designed in the UK, something that the Americans and Russians couldn’t get right. But they were essential to make sure the ramps were in exactly the right place. Their position was very sensitive depending on external conditions like temperature and pressure.

Air intake ramps - photo by Heritage Concorde

What’s your worst memory from the Concorde era?

Definitely the accident. If you’d asked me prior about how I would feel about a crash, I would say terrible for the aircraft, terrible for aviation, terrible for supersonic travel… But when it actually happened, it was all about the people. I didn’t think about the aircraft very much to begin with. It was all about the 113 people who were killed on site, their families and friends.

My first reaction was to ring my counterpart at Air France to see if there was anything I could do. He had just arrived at the site and was standing there looking at the debris field when I spoke to him. So that wasn’t good.

Two days later I was seconded to the Air Accident Investigation Branch in the UK. I was sent over to the site two days later, and it was still smouldering.

How did you find out about the crash?

My wife, young daughter and I were just going on holiday on the QEII. We were walking up the gangplank when the phone rang and my pager went off. ‘Ring BA, most urgent’. That was when I first heard, so the immediate decision was whether to get the bags off and go back to Heathrow or tell them to manage till I came back from my holiday. Obviously, I chose the first option. Our bags came off, I dropped my wife and daughter home and went straight to Heathrow. They didn’t see me again for 24 hours until I came home for a shave and shower and headed back to Heathrow again. It was the most intense period of my life.

After your 24 hour straight duty, when you went home for your shave and shower, did you think ‘that’s it, it’s over now’?

No, I’m an optimist. My glass is always half full. I never thought we wouldn’t get the plane back into service. Within that first 24 hours, we knew 95 to 98% what had happened. There were those around me and in Air France that didn’t want the plane to fly again. Concorde had always been a ‘love it, hate it’ type of plane. But from our customers perspective, they loved it. And even those who didn’t get to fly on it, wanted to. But internally, there was some jealousy, those that thought it was a waste of British Airways time, money and effort – even though there were times when the 7 aeroplanes in the Concorde fleet were making well over 50% of the company profit. British Airways, as you may know, had 200 aeroplanes in the entire fleet, 7 of them making over 50% of the profit! There were some in the company that knew this and some that didn’t. Those that did know this were pro the Concorde, whereas the others were anti, so 60/40 split in favour of Concorde. But we knew the 40% who were anti and particularly in Air France were keen not to put too much energy into getting Concorde flying again.

So, myself and my counterpart in British Airways engineering, a guy called Jimmy O’Sullivan were driving the British Airways effort to get Concorde flying again. I remember having a meeting in his office one day and we discussed the significant anti Concorde movement. I said we need a two prong attack. One would be the technical and logically driven prong and the other would be an emotional and sympathetic prong.

We really needed to go back and replay the efforts from when the aeroplane first came into service. There were a lot of people back then who just did not want to see Concorde fly – especially in the United States. We had a lot of issues getting clearance for flying into the States; and there was still that feeling of not letting Concorde come back.

So, Jimmy took on the logical and technical side of things; and I took on the emotional and sympathetic side. We absolutely had to get the British and French public on our side because if they didn’t want it, it was irrelevant whether we could do it, technically. We had to get support from our existing and potential customers. We knew that would be relatively easy because we knew that they really missed the opportunity to fly on the aeroplane.

The aeroplane didn’t fly for a year and to accommodate passengers who usually flew on Concorde, we had to reconfigure a number of our B747s to increase the size of the premium cabin substantially. We had 5 B747s dedicated to the New York run and they had 120 Club Class seats, as opposed to the normal 40. We’d had to treble the size of the Club Class cabin to accommodate what would have been Concorde passengers.

In hindsight it was a very interesting and demanding time; but I probably wouldn’t have thought that if we hadn’t succeeded. But we did succeed.

(Melissa here - British Airways Concorde services resumed a year later and the fleet eventually retired in 2003 after 27 years service. The photo below was the end of the very last flight of the Concorde - a salute including water cannons and a large escort onto the apron, farewelling an extraordinary era in commercial aviation).

Why was Concorde limited to Mach 2?

The original concept for Concorde was to cruise at Mach 2.2 but the faster you go, the effects of heating grow exponentially. Between Mach 1.7 and Mach 2, you need specialist aluminium to combat the heating effects. However, beyond Mach 2 you need either non – aluminium, very specialised aluminium or tungsten. It was this reason that Concorde was limited to Mach 2. That translated to 127C on the nose. It was limited to avoid shortening the life of the airframe with the constant heating.

The Boom Overture has addressed this problem by choosing to fly at Mach 1.7. It’s not much slower than Concorde but still more than twice as fast as conventional aeroplanes. It takes 7 - 8 hours to fly from Heathrow to New York in a conventional aeroplane but it took Concorde 3 hours, 20 minutes. Boom Overture would fly it in 3 hours, 40 minutes.

Boom Overture

Speaking of Boom Overture, where do you see future of Supersonic Travel?

Humans have always wanted to travel faster. Think of the domestication of horses, then ships, then cars. Then airplanes, then Concorde. So, the desire to move faster is inherent in the human species. Most of the people who travelled on Concorde, flew Concorde purely to save time.

Since Concorde retired, many people are frustrated with the slower travel options. The target market for Boom is not just the business traveller who desires speed. It is the recreational traveller who already choses to pay the extra for more comfort, convenience and service. Boom have identified around 620 suitable routes around the world that currently attract those customers and they serve 10 million potential supersonic passengers.

Up to around Mach 1.3, Boom are mastering “Boomless Cruise’. A way to deflect that sonic boom away from the surface of the earth by bouncing it off lower level atmospheric changes.

Photo - Boom Overture

What is the different technology to Concorde that allows this to happen?

We knew about deflecting the boom when Concorde was around. The sonic boom is not really a sound, it is ‘overpressure’. The intensity of the boom is affected by the weight of the plane, the speed of the plane, the height of the plane and weather conditions.

If you travel at Mach 1.3, the boom is of minor consequence – the ears may detect it like a car door slamming far away. We knew this in the Concorde days, but the aircraft and engines were inefficient at that speed. Fast forward 50 years with technology and for more efficient engines, and Boom recognise they can fly at that speed efficiently. This makes flying over land at Mach 1.3 viable. That’s around twice the speed of a conventional aircraft and could potentially be used on any route anywhere.

The next thing that has to be done is manage to get legislation in the US changed. Currently, there is a blanket ban on civilian supersonic flight over land, not because of the boom but because of the speed. It shouldn’t be about the nominal speed, it should be about whether a boom reaches the ground and inconveniences people. With ‘Boomless Cruise’ it won’t.

We thank Captain Mike Bannister for being so accommodating for us and giving up his spare time so we could ask those burning questions. If this interview whets your appetite to know more, we personally recommend Mike’s book on Concorde – aptly called ‘Concorde’.

Now. Just a little insider tip – Mike’s commentary on the Concorde crash is more than thorough and will reveal way more information than is commonly known, some of it breathtaking. It’s a book you can’t put down.

We also thank Mike for allowing us to use photos from his personal collection to illuminate this article.