Heritage Concorde

Concorde’s flight deck will at first give you the impression of crowding, it is smaller than most cockpits and there is not quite full headroom. Panels cover most of the walls and roof, and each is very closely packed with instruments. It is very narrow because the fuselage is beginning to fine down to the nose.  The Prototype Concorde flight deck differs from that of the Pre-production and Production ones.

 

At the time when Concorde was built her flight deck would have looked basically familiar to any pilot, most of the standard flight instruments would have been the same, except that they would display extra pieces of information due to Concorde’s role, and added to that there would have been a few new ones instruments.

The standard flight instruments such as the Mach meter would for example show extra information, it has two orange-coloured ‘bugs’ which enclose the range of Mach numbers available at a current centre of gravity. At the bottom right of the main front panel there is an indicator on which the centre of gravity is shown, this together with range permissible at the present Mach number.

Flight Deck instrument panels

It’s a complicated little flight deck, but you have to remember that Concorde is a very complicated little aircraft. You have to try and imagine the design effort that went into all of these panels.

The Captains Instrument Panel

The Pilot’s Instrument Panel

 

The Centre Panel Instruments

The pilots centre panel carries four columns of five engine instrument, and just to the right of them is the selectors for the landing gear, above that at the top is the selector for the nose and visor.

 

 

 

Centre Pedestal Instrument Panel

The centre pedestal contains the INS control and display units, the throttles and afterburner switches, and all radio controllers

Overhead Instrument Panel

The overhead roof panel carries a number of ancillary switches, including those for…

Lighting, De-icing, Probe heating add to that also Engine high pressure fuel cocks, flying control selection and change over switches, Engine fire extinguisher handles, Master Warning Panel, this is a collection of red and amber captions which light up with a gong type of sound warning to identify any failed system. With this in front of him, the flight engineer can face forward and motor is seat up to just behind and between the pilots for take-off and landing

 

 

 

 

 

Flight Engineers Panel

This panel is amazing, spectacular-looking affair which, when set up by him, will control automatically the air-conditioning and pressurization, fuel and centre of gravity, hydraulics, electrics and oxygen.

 

 

 

Automatic Flight Control System (AFCS)

 

 

Click on the picture above to be taken to a new page full of information concerning the Concorde  Automatic Flight Control System (AFCS)