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Flight engineer reveals what it was like to operate Concorde

In a pre-computer age, flight engineers were crucial to aviation. Former Concorde flight engineer Warren Hazelby explains how he helped fly the supersonic jet.

Another long-running gag, recalls Hazelby, stemmed from the fact that historically, Concorde’s captain, first officer and flight engineer couldn’t all eat the same meal mid-flight “in case we all got food poisoning.” Tye also points out that while comparatively few people experienced what it was like to travel on Concorde, and even fewer know the feeling of piloting this super-fast aircraft – the experience of sitting in the flight engineer seat is rarer still. Prior to his stint on Concorde, Hazelby had enjoyed the odd brush with celebrity: on a number of occasions he’d worked on airplanes ferrying members of the British Royal Family – including the Queen and Princess Diana – across the globe.

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