Pilots' stories (part 1)

John Tye was excited, amazed and inspired to see the sleek, futuristic Concorde supersonic airliner take to the skies and make history.

Little did Tye know that some 20 years later, he would be sitting in the cockpit of a Concorde for the first time, thinking to himself that his boyhood dream had come true.

The once famous supersonic plane Concorde

He vividly remembers the first moments of flying Concorde after undergoing extensive training and practice on a flight simulator. It was a feeling he could never forget.

Tye and the training pilots were in Seville, Spain. It was a beautiful Thursday evening. “The sun had just set, and you could see a big fireball at the end of the runway,” Tye told CNN . “We walked in and started the engines. It was the first time I felt the four Rolls-Royce engines start up and the first time I felt the plane shake, it was really amazing.”

Tye synchronized his watch with the co-pilot and flight engineer. Then they counted down, preparing for takeoff.

“Three, two, one – takeoff. I pushed all four throttles forward with my left hand. I was instantly forced back into my seat – an experience that can never be described, the acceleration as the plane taxied down the runway was so great,” Tye recalled.

Then the Concorde was in the air, rapidly gaining altitude.

“The first 20 minutes were the most incredible experience of my aviation career. It was absolutely unbelievable,” Tye said.

Early days of practice

For nearly three decades before it was retired in November 2003, the Concorde flew across the Atlantic in less than three hours, traveling at twice the speed of sound.

John Tye photographed with a British Airways Concorde

Concorde was very small compared to today's "giant" planes like Boeing 777, 787 or Airbus 380, 350. It only had room for 100 passengers per flight with very high ticket prices.

Very few people have experienced what it was like to fly on Concorde, and even fewer know what it was like to fly the world's fastest passenger aircraft ever put into commercial service.

British Airways and Air France were the only two airlines to operate Concorde. During Concorde's 27 years of service, more American astronauts flew into space than British Airways Concorde pilots.

When Tye first flew Concorde in the late 1990s, the aircraft had already been flying for two decades. Peter Duffey was there from the start, as one of the first British Airways pilots chosen to test the aircraft.

"I was involved in the development, flying with the test pilots. We flew to Australia and Canada, carrying a lot of passengers," Duffey told CNN .

Peter Duffey, now in his 90s, was a Royal Air Force pilot during World War II. He later flew the De Havilland Comet, the world's first commercial jet. Duffey was an instructor pilot for British Airways on Boeing 707s when the Concorde's manufacturers, Airbus, Aérospatiale, and BAC, came calling.

British politicians George Gardner and Baron Amery sign a souvenir on a model of the supersonic aircraft Concorde

“We knew Concorde was going to fly. Most people were excited and wanted to get on board,” recalled Duffey, who helped plan Concorde training and flew the plane until his retirement in 1980.

Pilot Jock Lowe, who shares his birthday with Concorde. He turned 25 on the day Concorde first took to the skies in 1969.

Lowe remembers watching the plane on television that day. "I thought to myself, 'Yeah, that's what I'm going to do.' I'm going to go and fly Concorde," Lowe told CNN .

Like Duffey, Lowe was one of the first pilots for British Airways, testing supersonic commercial aircraft at RAF Barford St. John, an air base in central England.

“It was a shock because I was walking around the hangar on a foggy February morning at RAF Barford,” Lowe said. “And I had never even seen a real supersonic aircraft before.”

An hour later, Lowe said he looked at the Concorde and found it "amazing".

"We climbed to 63,000 feet and started flying the plane around," he recalled. Lowe said the feeling of flying Concorde was "like driving a bus into a Formula One sports car."

Lowe finished his initial training in 1976 and remained in the Concorde fleet until his retirement in 2001, earning him the distinction of being the longest-serving British Airways Concorde pilot. "I flew it longer than anyone else. But because I had a lot of office work, I didn't fly as many hours as some of the others," Lowe, who was British Airways' chief flight operations officer, confirmed.

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