Why was Concorde's cockpit so complex?

All large airplanes have the same instruments, detailing the same systems from Navigation, Flight Instruments, Engine Instruments, Radios, with old fashioned Flight Engineer Stations including Hydraulic, Fuel, Engine Instruments, and Electronic system, Pressurization. ALL of them are the same.

Some aircraft might include a Navigator’s panel, or another station such as in military aircraft, but not in commercial aviation.

This is an image of the Concorde cockpit.

As you can see it’s no different from the Boeing 747–200 cockpit

It’s also not any different from the DC-10 cockpit

The thing you have to be aware of is that the Concorde was made by Aerospatiale-BAC while other commercial aircraft were made in the USA. USA manufacturers have a very simple but highly effective style of designing airplanes that is very user friendly.

The British don’t have this ability, not even up to today the Europeans and the Russians can’t design am attractively easy-to-use cockpit like the Americans.

What you’re seeing in the Concorde is their inability to design an easy Use Interface. Because the 747 (USA), the DC-10 (USA) and the Concorde (Europe) systems that must be displayed to the pilots are the same.

There are only so much systems that the pilot needs to see. Also, if there were more, then there would be a 4th pilot.

Jim Thurber provided several good images of fight decks, so I though I would add a few images I have collected (the fact I had already saved some flight deck photos should tell you something about me…).

Edit: Here is the Concord flight deck to compare to:

First, from what appears to be two AN-225 flight decks:

Next shows a 747 on approach, from the flight engineer’s position, with an image of the flight engineers station:

The 747 flight engineer position is not much different than a 707, which makes sense due to both being from Boeing four-engine aircraft. It would make retraining much easier, as well.

I share Jim's conclusion, in that it was no more complex than its contemporaries,