How Barbara Harmer Became Concorde's First Female Pilot

Today we will look at how a former hairdresser became the first woman to fly Concorde. Born on September 14, 1953, in Loughton, Essex, Barbara Harmer was the youngest of four children.Barbara grew up in Bognor Regis, a seaside resort town on the south coast of England, where she attended a convent school. Rather than wait until she was 16, Barbara left school at the age of 15 years old to pursue a career as a hairdresser.Having a change of mind five years later, Barbara became an air traffic controller at London Gatwick Airport (LGW) near Crawley, West Sussex. After taking the job, Barbara decided that she wanted to continue her education and started studying for her A-levels, hoping one day to become a lawyer.

Barbara began taking flying lessons

While studying English Law, Constitutional Law, Politics, and Geography, Barbara also took flying lessons. After gaining her private pilot's license, Barbara studied further, qualifying to become an instructor. Two years later, in 1982, Barbara obtained her commercial pilot's license and began applying for an airline job.

Photo: Dean Falkner via Wikimedia Commons.

After filling out more than 100 applications, Barbara finally got a job with Genair, a British Caledonian Commuter subsidiary based at Humberside Airport (HUY) in Lincolnshire. In the spring of 1984, Barbara joined British Caledonian and flew the airlines British Aircraft Corporation BAC One-Elevens for the next three years. She then advanced to flying the airline's long-haul McDonnell Douglas DC-10s.

British Airways buys British Caledonian

Following several setbacks in the mid-1980s, British Caledonian was in trouble and began actively seeking a merger to improve its market position. In December 1987, the UK's national flag carrier British Airways (BA) stepped in and bought British Caledonian and rebranded the airline as Caledonian Airways.

At the time of the merger, British Airways had 3,000 pilots on its books, of whom only 60 were women. Following the merger with BA, Barbara decided that she wanted to fly the Concorde supersonic airliner. Being selected for the Concorde program was tough, but like everything else Barbara had undertaken, she was eventually chosen to undergo a rigorous six-month-long training course.

While Jacqueline Auriol, the daughter of a wealthy French shipbuilder, was the first woman to fly the Concorde as a test pilot, Barbara became the Concorde's first female commercial pilot to fly the supersonic airliner. On March 25, 1993, Barbara finished her training and, later that year, served as the first officer on a Concorde flight between London Heathrow Airport (LHR) and John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) in New York.

Eventually becoming a captain on the plane, Barbara told British Caledonian's website about the time she flew the Manchester United football team to Spain for their Champions League final match against Bayern Munich. The game took place on May 26, 1999, and the Red Devils took the title thanks to goals from Teddy Sheringham and Ole Gunnar Solskjær. When speaking about the flight, Barbara said:

"I was thrilled and honored to be asked to fly the team on their historic journey to Barcelona and felt quite emotional as I taxied the Concorde out to the runway, with British flags flying and thousands of people wishing the team luck on the way."

Barbara flew Boeing 777s before retiring

Following the crash of Air France Flight 4590, when a Concorde crashed shortly after taking off from Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport (CDG), the supersonic airliner was retired on November 26, 2003. Still wanting to fly for BA, Barbara flew Boeing 777s before taking voluntary redundancy in 2009.