Engineering Hero's | heritage-concorde

CONCORDE ENGINEERS – Engineering Heroes

“The Concorde was special, the quality of the work, the minds, the skills, the talent, the commitment that went into it, that’s what really mattered”

Tony Benn former British MP

When you think of the stars of the Concorde world, you could be forgiven for only remembering the famous pilots who once flew this amazing aircraft to the edge of space. But the real heroes were the engineers, the men that got their hands dirty working on her and who fought so hard to keep her flying for nearly 28 years.

Sadly some of these Concorde engineering heroes have now died, but there are many still alive some of whom are still working for the airlines, some of them are also working on the Concorde airframes today, as with the engineers working for Heritage Concorde, Brooklands and the group keeping the French Concorde alive in Paris. We at Heritage Concorde will try to compile a list of these heroes, the men that worked and fought so hard to keep our dream alive for nearly 28 years of Concorde passenger operations.

The ground engineers were really based at five main locations, LHR / JFK / IAD/ MIA/ CDG and aside from LHR and CDG there really were not that many engineers in number to take care of the massive amount technical issues that the Concorde operations carried with it.

But we must also acknowledge the many other engineers at Airbus, BAC, BAe, Aerospatiale and the many other companies who worked so hard to achieve the success and continued service of Concorde up until 2003 when she took to the skies for the last time.

The updating of this page is an ongoing task, any additions would be welcome! Just use the "Contact us" link at the bottom.

Ian Mosdell – British Airways. Ian played a major role in the post 2000 Concorde modifications. Ian was also the main engineer working for Heritage Concorde Project Flagship . This saw life returned to BA Concorde G-BOAC. Without this man, Project Flagship would never have taken place, he was the one member of the team that we couldn’t of done without. Ian has also been working on British Concorde G-AXDN to get the nose working since 2013. Heritage Concorde - Project Salute.

John Dunlevy - British Airways. John has been connected with Concorde since 1965, when he became an apprentice with the Bristol Aeroplane Company and streamed for test flight avionics and production avionics. He Specialized in the aircraft air Intake developement at Fairford on the prototype and preproduction Concordes, and was involved with the British prototype 002 tours and British pre-production 101 endurance flying. He left Fairford in 1977 to join British Airways.

John studied Aircraft Electrical Systems at Bristol Aeroplane Technical College for a five year period culminating in an Aircraft Electrical Technicians Final Certificate and HNC. He was also involved with the initial assembly and design of the Air Intake Control System Units at the Guided Weapons Division in Bristol. John known as JD, was also at Moses Lake, onboard Concorde G-AXDN for the aircraft De-Icing Trials, and holds a certificate as one of the earliest pioneers of Supersonic (Presented by Brian Trubshaw)

John has been working on British Concorde G-AXDN since 2013 as part of the Heritage Concorde team, which inculded restoration of the flight deck systems and moving the nose and visor Heritage Concorde - Project Salute and Heritage Concorde - Return to Light

Richard Hughes - British Aircraft Corporation, Aircraft Engineer · Fairford, Gloucestershire · June 1971 to July 1976 British Airways, Aircraft Engineer · Heathrow, Slough, United Kingdom · 1976 to 1981

Alex Jolivet – Air France Concorde engineer. Alex is the engineer that currently heads the team that keeps the Concorde at Le Bourget alive, the only remaining live Concorde in the world which is powered-up weekly

Christian Julius – Aerospatiale
Sadly Christian passed away in 2017 however Heritage Concorde members will always remember the input he had on our projects.
"Ah, Concorde .... Il est sorti du futur, et il est resté quelque temps entre nous. Maintenant il y est retourné, nous laissant dans le passé....Avec seulement nos souvenirs, et des rêves."

Robert White – BAC, British Aerospace, BAe Systems . Bristol, United Kingdom. Robert has been an Aircraft Electrician who worked mainly with Concorde from from September 1967 and is currently still at BAe Systems. He also conducted tours on G-BOAF while she was on display at Filton airfield until 2010.

Phil Rozier – British Airways

Perry Doors

Alan Perry – BAC at Filton which became British Aerospace (BAe) and known today as BAe Systems, Concorde stayed in service due to Alan’s work on the new post 9/11 Concorde flight deck door.

One of the biggest problems was that the new flight deck door (Required after the September 11th 2001 World Trade Center attack) had to open in a situation such as the passenger cabin losing a window, failure to do so could cause structural failure of the whole airframe, and of course trying to solve this problem with Concorde was twice as hard, due to the lack of space After hours of research and tests by engineer’s and designers at Filton, the answer was found and Concorde was saved again.

Alan Perry, who had worked for BAC at Filton during Concorde’s development, was at home during his lunchtime and noticed his cat using the cat flap in the door, and based on that idea came up with the “Perry Doors”. So within the ceiling and floor of the Concorde cabin, there are small flap type doors.

Phil Cairns - British Airways. During the work to restore Concorde to flight following the Paris crash, he worked on the spar 72 modifications. This involved the strengthening and removal of the predicted wear and tear in this area of the aircraft. Phil has been working on British Concorde G-AXDN since 2013 as part of the Heritage Concorde team restoring the nose so it can move for public display. Heritage Concorde - Project Salute

Keith Brown – British Airways – long standing licensed Engineering Manager (retired) which involved fourteen years with Concorde, both direct in Major Maintenance, LHR Ops and overseas Line Ops, and later in a senior technical role during the very difficult years

Paul Snelgrove – British Airways - Paul is reputed to be one of the most knowledgable engineers, this comes from his former colleagues. "A very skilled man and a first class engineer"

Anthony Morrish - Fairford. During the development days Tony operated as a mechanical engineer on Concorde, more recently he has been involved with the restoration of the nose systems on G-AXDN. Heritage Concorde - Project Salute.

Other Concorde engineering hero's

Fred Heal – British Airways

Murry Wilson – British Airways

Andy Cameron – British Airways

Karl Howard – Norris – British Airways

Ian Bishop - British Airways

John Coe - British Airways

Mick Cousins - British Airways

Eddie Crook – British Airways

Bob Dowie – British Airways

Bob Hodgkinson - British Airways

Keith Leyland - British Airways

Jack Gott - Concorde 1976 - 1996

Ken Martin - BAC

Stanley Brion - BAC

Stanley was responsible for designing the fuel pump system for the aircraft, the heart which pumped it's highly explosive lifeblood through the craft. Sadly passed away 26/03/20

Read about Ken

Dave Sutton - British Airways

John Kaiser - British Airways

Kevin Moyes - British Airways

Doug Wernham - British Airways

Shah Yusufzai – British Airways

Roy Cox – BAC Filton, Roy was involved with British prototype Concorde 002

Len Jenkins – British Airways

Marc Morley- British Airways

Carl Percey - British Airways

Dave Shelford - British Airways

Eric Smith - British Airways

Baz Glennister - British Airways

Peter Thomas - British Airways
Peter was involved with crew training at Fairford, heat trials in Bahrain and trained the New York boys, day trips to Egypt Moscow Barbados.

British Airways Concorde Engineering Heroes at New York JFK

Tony Badia - British Airways

Alan Barker - British Airways

Claude Call - British Airways

Ray Carolla - British Airways

Jim Dennis - British Airways

John Hess - British Airways

Leo Korbus - British Airways

Syd Langford - British Airways

Tommy Mattola - British Airways

Bob Malony - British Airways

John Pace – British Airways