What the pilots said: John Hutchinson, retired British Airways Concorde captain 1977-1992
The cockpit view is of a very dark blue sky. Take-off is most dramatic, you open the throttle and there is a surge of power in the small of your back. I used to have a lot of famous people on board. I'm keen on classical music so it was wonderful to meet Itzhak Perlman, Isaac Stern, Ashkenazi and Dame Kiri Te Kanawa.
Once I was flying from Bahrain to Singapore and the cabin crew told me Elvis Costello was on board. During the flight he wanted to video the sun rising over the Malacca Strait. So he came on the flight deck and started filming: "God this is absolutely ****ing amazing," he said. "I'm at 60,000 ****ing feet, mach ****ing 2, that's twice the ****ing speed of sound, haven't seen anything ****ing like it in my ****ing life . . ." After he'd finished I said: "That was an interesting commentary." He replied: "I don't like writing letters, you see, so when I am on a long tour I send my mother videos from the places I've been instead!"
On another flight, an 85-year-old woman passenger said the first aeroplane she had seen was in 1908, when one of the Wright brothers landed in Savannah, Georgia. Here was a woman whose life had spanned the history of air travel, sitting beside me at twice the speed of sound.
(submited by Kelly Hale)
(So now we all have a new bootleg goal: EC's home movies. Somebody go ask his mom...)
2:26:37 PM 
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