THE AMERICAN DREAM
In the second of our two-part Braniff Concorde special, Chris Sloan chats to Captain John Baganz about touching the edge of space as a member of the airline’s elite Concorde crew
ABOVE: The number of pilots qualified to fly Concorde during its career numbered fewer than 500. One of those lucky few was Captain John Baganz
Over Concorde’s 34- year career, an elite cadre of pilots qualified to fly the world’s only successful commercial supersonic transport (SST) numbered fewer than 500. Included were 17 Braniff International Airways pilots, a diminutive group and a rarer breed than today’s astronauts.
For 18 months and 360 flights, Braniff enjoyed the prestige of being just one of two airlines beyond Air France and British Airways to have operated regular scheduled Concorde passenger services.
Its roster included three captains, five first officers, four flight engineers, a check captain and a check engineer. Three pilots left during this period and were replaced by others through a seniority bid. Forty-five years since that final flight on June 1, 1980, only two of these men survive, one being Captain John Baganz.
Destined to fly
A native son from a small town in Indiana, Baganz’s dreams of being a pilot began when he was six, lying in the summer grass watching Super Constellations fly overhead. However, in 1970, his dreams of flying were almost derailed when a lack of funds ended his flight training. Baganz then took his college degree and became a successful manager of a well-known retail chain store. While managing a jewellery store in Dallas, Baganz met a customer who, as destiny would have it, was a captain for Braniff.
“‘Captain Cason, I would give anything to be in your shoes!’ He looked at me with piercing, haunting eyes and said, ‘John, if that’s what you want, go after it’”, Baganz recalled. From here, Baganz quit his job and became a waiter to have more free time to fly and study. Two months later destiny intervened again when he received a call from Jim Bailey from Braniff’s training department. Baganz vividly remembers that call: “Bailey said ‘John, I hear you want to be a pilot for Braniff’, to which I enthusiastically answered ‘Yes Mr Bailey, that is my lifelong dream’”. Fortuitously, with 136 hours of flight time and a Private Pilot’s Licence (PPL), Baganz accepted the last seat in a class of 20 for Braniff’s Boeing 727 contract training flight engineer school. His classmates all had turbojet backgrounds. Baganz still graduated first in his class. However, he was far short of the hours required to occupy a Braniff flight deck.