[HN Gopher] Flight engineer reveals what it was like to operate ...
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Flight engineer reveals what it was like to operate Concorde
Author : dxs
Score : 69 points
Date : 2024-09-05 14:13 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnn.com)
| jgrahamc wrote:
| Or rather he doesn't. The entire article fails to explain what he
| did in any amount of detail.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| IDK about the Concorde specifically, but the flight engineer
| mainly monitored a bunch of the aircraft systems, made sure
| they were all within normal parameters, monitored fuel usage
| and rebalanced the fuel in the tanks, in some aircraft they
| would operate the engine throttles/thrust levers on command
| from the captain.
|
| Like the position of Navigator, they were made obsolete by
| greater automation, full authority digital engine control
| (FADEC), and similar technological advances.
| jandrese wrote:
| I found it interesting that he described the job as requiring
| not only constant full attention, but constant adjustments.
| Like for the full 3 hour flight he has to be tweaking knobs
| and flipping switches without even enough free time to have a
| coffee. You would expect that once the aircraft is level and
| cruising the workload should be significantly reduced, but
| apparently not.
| jakub_g wrote:
| If you're around Bristol, UK, I recommend to visit Aerospace
| Bristol which has a Concorde museum and it explains the role
| of the flight engineers.
|
| Rebalancing fuel tanks was a major thing in Concorde indeed.
| I don't remember details exactly, but to maintain the
| supersonic speed, Concorde needed to be in a certain
| position, and to maintain that position, fuel would have to
| be rebalanced regularly.
| timthorn wrote:
| I'm pretty sympathetic to your case (I remember visiting Cape
| Canaveral and watching a replay of the countdown to a rocket
| launch in the control room, which was incredibly disappointing
| when they just flashed lights on the various consoles without
| explaining what happened at each). But to be fair, the article
| wasn't titled "what a flight engineer actually did on Concorde"
| and does give a flavour for the general feel of the role.
| tekla wrote:
| Half the article is listing out the flight engineer duties and
| why it was different on the Condorde versus other aircraft
| xattt wrote:
| There's got to be a flight manual floating around for the
| Concorde that would outline each role.
| mhandley wrote:
| Concorde had 13 fuel tanks, but only four directly fed the
| engines, so they were constantly moving fuel between tanks. In
| addition, fuel was used to cool the aircraft structure because
| it got very hot from supersonic speeds. And fuel was also used
| to trim the aircraft pitch - if you were a little out, it
| increased fuel consumption, but if you were a lot out it would
| be uncontrollable. And of course all the changed constantly as
| fuel was consumed. So a key part of the flight engineer's role
| was managing fuel.
|
| https://www.heritageconcorde.com/fuelgeneral
| shannonrp wrote:
| Nice
| btreesOfSpring wrote:
| Found the anecdote at the end about him diagnosing problems while
| on a modern computer automated aircraft fascinating. Of course
| the roll of flight engineer was going to go disappear but it
| seems the are still knowledge gaps that modern pilots have that
| this roll was able to better address.
| shemtay wrote:
| role -> the role of flight engineer
|
| roll -> do a barrel roll
| Vecr wrote:
| What's shown in the meme is actually an aileron roll, at
| least probably. Way too low poly to tell for sure.
| geocrasher wrote:
| How many of us here wanted to be Scotty or Geordi over any other
| role. This was the real life version of those very characters,
| and the article's subject was a man who was one of only 57 Flight
| Engineers to ever work on the Concorde.
|
| The comradery with the pilot and copilot struck me- they all knew
| the importance of each other's role. They left their ego's at the
| door, or at least that's the tale that's being told here, and I
| like it.
|
| I wanted _badly_ to be a pilot as a youngster, but after reading
| this, and looking at what I do now, I wonder if I should 've been
| wanting to be a Flight Engineer!
| rsynnott wrote:
| > I wonder if I should've been wanting to be a Flight Engineer!
|
| Probably not; they barely exist anymore, do they? I think
| Concorde was the last civilian jet to have one, anyway.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| The article states that.
|
| Still it is a dream to aspire, like a dream for becoming
| Scotty.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > I think Concorde was the last civilian jet to have one,
| anyway.
|
| That would surprise me - the 747 typically had a crew of
| three.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Only up to the 747-300. Though actually, some of those seem
| to still be in use; I wonder were they ever retrofitted to
| dump the flight engineer.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Wikipedia says there are only 2 747-300 remaining in
| operation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Boeing_7
| 47_operators.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Also about 15 200s, tho, and, amazingly, precisely 1 100
| operated by the Iranian airforce.
|
| Even more surprisingly, there are a few 707s still in
| use!
| FearNotDaniel wrote:
| > one of only 57 Flight Engineers
|
| Minor correction, because the article failed to mention that
| Air France also had a fleet of Concordes, that's 57 Flight
| Engineers working _at BA_ on the Concorde. But your point
| stands, I suspect the global total barely touched three
| figures.
| russfink wrote:
| I also feel that the fact that the systems were not modernized
| foreshadowed the demise of the concept. I would love to know any
| insight of the behind closed doors discussions, ie when did they
| know Concorde was unprofitable and shutting down, I'm guessing it
| was as early as 1985.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Concorde was in a slightly odd situation where it was, AIUI
| profitable to operate it on the London->NY and Paris->NY routes
| (though not elsewhere) but only because Airbus was on the hook
| for supplying parts and maintenance. But I think it was
| apparent that Concorde was not _broadly_ viable very soon after
| the first flight, if not _before_ the first flight.
|
| AFAIK Concorde "B" (the planned fast-follow improved version -
| longer range etc) was abandoned by the late 70s; at that point
| the writing was on the wall.
| harry_ord wrote:
| UK and France seemed to have a few engineering projects like
| this(cool but not economical), I've seen the channel tunnel
| described slightly similar.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Channel tunnel's much harder to pin down, both because it
| has an economic benefit beyond the revenue from its
| operation, and because much of the benefit is ~permanent;
| in a century it will _still_ be producing an economic
| benefit (really this is a problem with judging the
| economics of rail infrastructure in general; huge capital
| outlay, but it lasts a _really_ long time).
| usr1106 wrote:
| The owner company has been close bankruptcy and needed
| debt restructuring in the past. I don't know what their
| current figures look like, but there have been special
| actions to increase utilization in the past, which does
| not sound like good news. With Brexit things are unlikely
| to improve, even if we neglect the pandemic as a one time
| disturbance.
|
| Already in the second year of its operation there was
| severe fire requiring a closure for 7 months. Remember
| Twin Towers or Nord Stream. It's a risky project. I don't
| want to speculate whether it will still be operated in a
| century, but a lot can go wrong before that.
| jemmyw wrote:
| Concorde was probably highly economical, just not directly.
| It could be seen as the project that started Airbus and
| saved European aircraft manufacturing. Except for not being
| able to know how things would have turned out if Concorde
| didn't exist.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Or, less optimistically, caused Airbus's predecessors'
| consolidation into Airbus, thus leaving the world with
| three, and then two, makers of large passenger jets, and
| leading to the current unfortunate situation where even
| though the 737's currently kind of a dud, you have to buy
| it anyway because it's half the market and the A320 side
| of the market is booked up for years.
|
| Like I think there's a strong argument that the current
| extreme consolidation of the industry is quite a bad
| thing.
| Perz1val wrote:
| I wonder if and when we will see another supersonic passenger
| plane. A few years back there was a concept of launching
| starships between continents, but that seems to have died off.
| Maybe a hydrogen powered plane will be the future, at least the
| fuel is more green.
| fragmede wrote:
| Boom Supersonic is working on it, with plans to deliver the
| Overture by 2030, but they have plenty of naysayers.
| heisenbit wrote:
| As an engineer by training I feel we lost something with all the
| computerization. Direct observation, applying thinking and
| interactions in the field have been supplanted with sensors,
| models and actors splitting the job into a "higher" level
| planning and all the "lower" level field work. What is often lost
| is the instinct and intuition that comes from being part of the
| machinery and the impact may only be felt a generation later.
| DaveChurchill wrote:
| As a passenger all I really care about are the safety stats. If
| fly by wire is safer than manual flight them I'm all for it.
| fragmede wrote:
| Moreover switching to all touchscreen controls. There's just
| something satisfying about getting to know a physical device
| intimately enough that you can do it blindfolded. Those sort of
| interfaces are fewer and futher between, unfortunately.
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