By Francesca Street, CNN
(CNN) — On January 21, 1976 a teenage John Tye was among crowds of onlookers clinging to a chain link fence, cheering as the first commercial British Airways Concorde flight departed from London’s Heathrow airport.
Tye was exhilarated, amazed and inspired as he saw this sleek, supersonic airplane of the future climb into the skies and make history.
Little did Tye know some 20 years later, he’d be sitting in the Concorde flight deck for the first time, pinching himself that his teenage dream was coming true.
Tye vividly recalls his first moments flying Concorde. Sure, he’d gone through extensive training, he’d practiced on the simulator — but this was the real deal. It was a feeling he could never have fully prepared for.
Tye and his fellow training pilots were in Seville, Spain. It was a beautiful Thursday evening — “the sun was just setting, you could see a big ball of fire at the end of runway,” as Tye puts it.
“We got in and started the engines, and to feel those four Rolls-Royce Olympus engines starting up and the airplane vibration for the very first time was just absolutely mind blowing,” Tye tells CNN Travel.
Tye synchronized his watch with the training captain and the flight engineer. Then, they counted down and prepared for takeoff.
“It’s ‘three, two, one — now,’ and I pushed all four throttles fully forward in my left hand and I was just shoved back into my seat — an experience I could never describe, the acceleration as you shot off down the runway,” he says.
Then, the Concorde was in the air, building height.
“That 20 minutes was the most incredible experience in my aviation career. It was just absolutely unbelievable,” says Tye.
Early days
For nearly three decades before it retired in November 2003, Concorde aircraft sped through the skies above the Atlantic in just under three and a half hours, flying at twice the speed of sound.
Most of us can only imagine what it was like to be on board — after all, these aircraft were small, with room for just 100 passengers per flight, and ticket prices were steep.
While comparatively few people experienced what it was like to travel on Concorde, even fewer know the feeling of piloting the fastest passenger plane ever to enter commercial service.
British Airways and Air France were the only two airlines who operated the aircraft. It’s said that during the aircraft’s 27 years of service, there were more qualified American astronauts than there were British Airways Concorde pilots.
When Tye first piloted Concorde in the late 1990s, the airplane had been established for two decades. Peter Duffey was there at the very beginning, as one of the first British Airways pilots selected to trial the aircraft. Duffey passed away in 2024 at the age of 98, but he spoke to CNN Travel in 2023 about his experience on Concorde.
“I was involved in the development — flying with the test pilots,” Duffey told CNN Travel. “We flew to Australia and Canada, carrying a lot of passengers.”
Duffey learned to fly as an Royal Air Force pilot during World War II. He later flew the de Havilland Comet, the first commerical turbojet engine aircraft, and one of its successors, the de Havilland Comet 4. When Concorde came calling, Duffey was an established British Airways training pilot on the Boeing 707.
“We knew Concorde was coming, and most people felt intrigued and wanted to get onto the aircraft. So I put my name down for it,” he recalled.
Duffey helped mastermind the first Concorde training scheme, and flew the aircraft until he retired in 1980.
Also there at the beginning was pilot Jock Lowe, who shares a birthday with Concorde — he turned 25 the day the supersonic plane first took to the skies in 1969.
Lowe remembers watc