Captain Doug Brown spoke to Club members and their partners at our evening meeting on Thu 24 Sep to describe his highly prominent senior flight officer position at British Airways, where he had held major leadership roles across its long-haul fleets becoming BA's Chief Pilot for the Boeing 747 fleet.
Over his career, Captain Brown managed the airline's widebody operations, ultimately transitioning to serve as the Chief Pilot for the broader Boeing Fleet (encompassing both the 747 and 777 types) based out of London.
He showed how airline cockpits had developed over the years from a mind-boggling number of dials and gauges with huge yoke steering columns to the modern-day flat screen displays and side-mounted hand controller. He explained the complexity of organising airline flying operations and illustrated the collaborative nature of manufacturing aircraft at multi-location manufacturers. Finally, he shared a few memories of some of the notable political and royal passengers he had piloted during his interesting and fun career.