Concorde Flight Engineer Qualifications
 

Hopefully someone can satisfy my curiousity on this one. What were the requirements to be a Flight Engineer on Concorde? Was an aviation background necessary or any other flying experience? Could one rock up with negligible experience except for sheer enthusiasm to be considered? I know it's all pretty academic now but it would be interesting to read about the selection process for the third seat.

As nobody else has responded I offer my thoughts. Firstly, Flight Engineers are licenced much like pilots after a great deal of training so they are not recruited "off the street" for particular aircraft. Secondly, I imagine that Concorde FEs were well-experienced with some years of expereince on other types before joining the SST fleet.

As has been mentioned many times elsewhere, FEs are a dying breed and the majority of modern commercial aircraft are crewed just with pilots.

If you Google "Flight Engineer qualifications" you'll find enough to read into the dark hours!

As far as I know Concorde FE's came from other types at BA and were all experienced. There were some direct entry FE's on other types but most came from aviation backgrounds. The RAF took people from outside of aviation but as HD said we are a dying breed now and any positions that would come up now would easily filled by qualified guys.

I think one of the main qualifications for any Flight Engineer was to have a strong liking for chicken!

And to know where to get the best buffet breakfasts, cheap beer and other dubious entertainment.

I seem to recall the Flight Engineer could always plan the bar crawl from one happy hour to the next!

Many thanks for the replies. After I had commenced the thread, I used my loaf and googled 'Concorde Flight Engineer' and found a shed load of former Concorde flightcrew (including flight engineers) are now plying their trade as guest speakers. For those who are interested, the following link is:

http://www.concorde.demon.co.uk/html/our_speakers.html

From a review of the relevant profiles, as HD suggests, the usual path seems to have been from flight engineer on other aircraft types within BA (B747-136, VC10) and promotion to Concorde. Alternatively, recruitment was from the RAF, then the path above.

One of my original reasons for posting was that I (no doubt in keeping with many others) who wouldn't have necessarily made the grade for pilot would have relished the opportunity to apply for flight engineer at the time. As we know, with the advent of the digital age and demise of analogue flight systems, flight engineers are an endangered species!

My other observation is this. The role of Concorde flight engineer appears to have been a very responsible job. I recall from a BBC documentary, the flight engineer had to move the fuel from various tanks to keep the aircraft in trim but more importantly, this was a time critical activity due to the sheer speed one was travelling and one couldn't afford to be distracted.

On a lighter note, as vctenderness hints at, I imagine being on BA001 repeatedly, the crew breakfast probably become a rather dull affair after a while! Anyway, many thanks for the replies, appreciated.