Concorde pilots?

[Bearcat]

Folks, what are concorde pilots doing? Are they on gardening leave or were they reconverted to previous types? Further any news on concorde and is it at this stage a viable option for them to return to service?
Nope I am not a jorno but a curious 73 skipper

[Iain]

Rumour had it they are in the sims, so as soon as Concorde can fly again, they are ready to take the reins!
Iain

[JB007]

Yep..in the SIM @ Filton a few times a month, although one of them seems to be in my local most nights of the week !!!!!

007

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A smile is a curve that puts things straight.

[Captain Slack-Bladder]

They're mostly flying Airbuses (must be francofiles)

[Bellerophon]

BA had twenty captains on Concorde at the time of the "SC" accident. They waived the type freeze and offered a free bid, in seniority, for vacancies on other fleets. Not a single captain bid to leave, which allowed BA to direct them to any fleet that BA wished, but which also entitled them to a return to Concorde.

Six captains remain on the fleet, two more have other managerial positions in BA, and one captain reached normal retirement age and has retired. Of the remaining eleven captains, one has returned to the B737, one to the B767, two to the B747-400, two are on A320 courses and four await courses on the B747-400.

Last, but not least, is the ex A320 training captain (who was filmed in a BBC documentary a while ago as the instructor on a A320 base training detail) who is also now back on his old fleet, sadly before the BBC had found time to air the footage they took during his base training detail onto Concorde!

The co-pilots on Concorde were a very senior group, many of whom either had, or were senior enough to have had, commands on other BA aircraft, and who had given them up in order to fly in the right hand seat of Concorde. For them it was a much more difficult decision to make, and several used their seniority to bid for commands on other fleets, and at least two are now training captains on the A320. The rest accepted direction to other BA fleets, with the entitlement of a return to Concorde.

Those flight engineers who had recently come off the B747-200 returned to that fleet, whilst a small number took early retirement.

The remaining flight engineers, along with all those pilots still awaiting conversion courses, have been re-deployed to ground jobs in other parts of BA, many working in the Concorde engineering offices at LHR, assisting with the Return to Service program. Sadly, talk of the crews having months off work was very wide of the mark!

The Concorde Flight Manager, Training Manager and four training captains remain on the fleet, and form the core group who, along with the CAA Flight Ops Inspector for Concorde and the CAA Chief Test Pilot, who just happens to fly Concorde, (well, wouldn’t you if you had his job!) will perform any necessary test or evaluation flying and lead the "Return to Service" program. Also in this core group are the one remaining co-pilot instructor and all five flight engineer instructors.

AF is the lead aircraft in the Return to Service program, and will be the first to fly again, with AE and AG planned as the next two aircraft into the hangar.

Whilst the work has taken a little longer than originally expected, with our engineers having to work in very difficult and extremely cramped conditions most of the time, it is now proceeding well (as three PPRuNers recently saw for themselves) and currently we anticipate that a BA Concorde will fly again by the summer.