Brian Trubshaw; Concorde Test Pilot

Brian Trubshaw, 77, the first British test pilot to fly the Concorde and a staunch defender of the plane after it was grounded last year. On April 9, 1969, Trubshaw flew the British-French Concorde 002 supersonic airliner from Filton near its Bristol, England, construction center to a Royal Air Force base in Fairford. A month earlier, his French counterpart, Andre Turcat, had taken Concorde 001 aloft. A test pilot for 30 years, Trubshaw called his Concorde debut “a wizard flight,” placed a weather vane shaped like the sleek plane atop his house and wrote about the experience in his 1998 autobiography “Brian Trubshaw--Test Pilot.” Both British Airways and Air France grounded their Concordes last year after one crashed near Paris killing 113 people. Trubshaw fiercely continued to champion his beloved plane, insisting, “I don’t believe there’s a technical problem that can’t be overcome.” Trubshaw enlisted in the Royal Air Force in 1942, when he was 18, and flew bombers until the end of World War II. Afterward he flew planes transporting the Royal Family, and then became a test pilot until his retirement in 1985. On Saturday at Tetbury, England.