10 Fascinating Jobs That Keep Planes On-Time | Insider Business

from the chefs in Singapore making thousands of in-flight meals to the team keeping runways clear for takeoff to handlers training dogs to detect explosives there are thousands of people working behind the scenes to keep our flights safe and comfortable the work never stops because the planes never stop we went around the world to see how they train and prevent delays on roughly one hundred thousand flights every day our first stop is Singapore where we learn how chefs prepare meals for economy business and first-class passengers this is Singapore Airlines biggest catering facility located within Changi Airport [Music] it's run by the airline's catering partner SATs and while SATs does make food for 45 other carriers Singapore Airlines is by far its biggest customer Sie to be friends is a very demanding customer [Music] Anthony works with SATs to develop hundreds of new menus every year and creating one dish can take 9 to 12 months there's different menus flying in different directions and different Cuisine types Japanese Chinese Singaporean and obviously Western meals the airline runs menus from 77 different departure cities so if you're leaving Singapore you'll be offered chicken and rice or a hawker soup if you're leaving New York City you'll get a smoked trout salad and of course the food changes based on where you're sitting on the plane In First Class Suites passengers have the most options from caviar and lobster thermador to beef tenderloin in premium economy Flyers have just a couple choices like this Nasi carabu because the airline Cooks it in bigger batches no matter the cabin chefs try to include a protein vegetable starch and a sauce in each dish before anyone can get to cooking they need to suit up they wash their hands thoroughly and step into this air shower remove hair dust and anything which may provide opportunity inside the facility for contamination [Music] Sap's team of over a thousand workers handles a lot of food easily one day we can have about 800 to a thousand menus running they usually start cooking meals 24 to 36 hours before a scheduled flight and it's all broken down into stations it's like a restaurant you have a salad section you have a dessert section you have a hot Kitchen business is just on a much larger scale in the premium kitchen they're grilling meat like this filet mignon for the first and business class essentially what we're doing is we're cooking the meal about 30 40 percent if they cook the meat all the way through now it would be really overcooked by the time it got under the plane so chefs depend on flight attendants who finish cooking it in the air they just apply residual heat of about 150 160 degrees in our aircraft ovens over in the hot kitchen Cooks handle well all the hot food for first economy and business class vegetables pasta noodles rice noodles hot meals soups and sauces this is some heavy duty batch cooking Chef's boil noodles and giant bats tomato sauce gets its own tank and is pumped out into these cooling trays from the bottom and as with the meat chefs aren't cooking everything all the way so a lot of these uh what we call 50 60 finished even vegetables it's a little bit like a pasta we want it to be authentic so you can see there it has a little bit of firmness a little bit of bite so if we crack if we break that we still get some snap so as it cools the meals will continue the food will continue to to cook until it reaches the the core temperature that we need to achieve for food safety every tray along the way gets a tracking label that way if there's any issue with food sickness on a flight the airline can trace it back to the exact batch we also want to maintain the integrity and the color of the leaf green so we cook it in the hottest possible water 100 degrees we cook it for the shortest amount of time as possible once the food comes off the heat it immediately heads down this conveyor belt to the blast chiller that stops the cooking process in its tracks some things though are totally cooked through like these omelettes on this rotating table the eggs come pre-cracked in a liquid mixture a pump squirts the perfect amount into each pan Chef stationed around the table cook flip fold and stack every omelette we're producing here six seven thousand omelettes per day minimum so omelets is mostly for the economy kitchen once all the elements are cooked most of the way through they head to this room so this is what we call casserole assembly for economy meals and also business class and some first-class meals this is where they pack all the food into the foil containers you might have seen in Flight normally from the time they take the meal components from the fridge within 35-45 minutes they have to have put the meal into the trade Anthony gives chefs photos to show them how each dish is supposed to look flight attendants get a similar picture to follow for plating because we have around six and a half seven thousand cabin crew and there's only one of me I can't be every day at the training College during the cabin crew so we do this for consistency one by one workers pile on starches sauces meats and vegetables here's that pasta we saw cooking earlier they each get a foil topper and then are carted into a holding fridge that's where basically the packing team goes a little bit like a supermarket where you pick and mix chefs assemble the desserts in a different room today they're making floating islands a dessert with a meringue suspended and cremon glaze all these dishes look great on the ground but there's one big problem food can taste different in the air on some planes your taste buds are about 30 percent less sensitive to sweet and salty foods that's because of the pressure dryness and engine sound in the older triple sevens and a320s the cabin is pressurized up to 8 000 feet so it feels like you're eating lunch on Machu Picchu and humidity on board can sit as low as 12 percent less than some deserts when you have a dry mouth and a worsened sense of smell foods can be twice as Bland so historically that meant Airlines loaded on salt for you to even taste the food sometimes leaving passengers feeling bloated but in new planes manufacturers are making conditions on board easier on your body 350s a380s and 787 Singapore Airlines flies cabins are pressurized up to six thousand feet so instead of Machu Picchu it feels like you're eating dinner in Denver and because new planes are made of more carbon fiber it's possible to increase humidity to about 24 percent when you have more moisture in the cabin space your sinuses and your body is not dehydrating as quickly and your taste and your palate is not as you know influenced so Flyers can taste a lot more these days making it easier on Chefs like Anthony there's no additional salt pepper no additional salts Anthony can use this room to simulate a pressurized cabin and test how food will taste in the sky and to address that bloating issue he uses ingredients like Shoemaker juices swelling in your body inflammation right so you're feeling a lot more comfortable Ginger is also for uh for sleep and rest and relaxation which leaves just one more hurdle reheating the food flight attendants only have small ovens to work with on board so how do chefs make sure their food still taste good well cooking halfway and moving quickly helps and they avoid dishes that don't travel well we try not to do things that are deep fried for example chicken wings it doesn't stay crispy and none of us really like to bite into a soft french fries they also stay away from thin fish like sea bass a fish which is a bit thicker a Cod a salmon they stand up much better to you know in-flight experience after all the meals are assembled the stuff with the carts you see on board so we have here the tray assembly area elevators bring clean trays cutlers and dishes upstairs the silverware elevator yeah it's like a you know it's a deluxe ride you know for your Cutlery chefs work on an assembly line picking and placing all the napkins all the porcelain the linenware the knife's forks everything right through to the salt pepper shakers and the butter portions this is a dinner service for business class and then they'll put the appetizer so the appetizer is always preset on a supper service they'll put a lid on it they'll put the dressing on the side and then it will get packed into the cards it's for economy class just the tableware like the food isn't quite as fancy that card is packed with all the meals inside it has a label tag it says what flight number it is what destination what meal service it should be this helps cabin crew know what's inside the carts without having to open them if you open it up that document there will correspond with what meal goes inside so here we have porcelain here we have the glassware and then that will correspond then with the meal types that come in from from the from the meal packing side those cards take a ride on another elevator and will be loaded onto flights usually within an hour before takeoff every team along the process has to move extremely fast because all the food has to be cooked assembled and eaten in Flight within 72 hours so we never want to exceed 72 hours in terms of food processing requirements and can and can't serve those meal this meal will be on a plane tonight Okay so this production probably occurred yesterday it all moves so fast because at the end of the day they've got a flight to catch every time a plane lands each tire leaves around one and a half pounds of rubber on the runway tires are stationary until touchdown when sudden contact with the ground causes friction quickly bringing them up to speeds of more than 150 miles per hour and producing temperatures around 500 degrees Fahrenheit that temperature makes the tread rubber melt and bond to the runway and lights that guide Pilots the Airbus A380 is the largest passenger plane in the world and it has 22 tires that's over 30 pounds of rubber lost per Landing equivalent to the amount of rubber in two of your car's tires so how to solve that rubber get removed and what's so dangerous about it building up on runways there is two things you need to consider when you're talking rubber removal from the runway there's the rubber removal from the actual tarmac itself but the other process is to remove the rubber from the lights at London's Heathrow Airport where Muhammad Works an average of 650 planes with 10 Tires each touchdown every single day that's 10 000 pounds of rubber daily a buildup in rubber can make the surface of a Runway smooth decreasing the friction needed to land this can impact braking and control and increase the risk of hydroplaning in wet conditions and Runway lights used to guide takeoff landing and taxiing especially at night and in low visibility conditions are dimmed by the melted rubber bonding to them within the United States the Federal Aviation Administration recommends that rubber deposition be checked weekly for any airport with at least 210 daily Landings the process for checking rubber buildup isn't as simple as checking for skid marks and it requires the use of specialized tests and instruments so for the runway we have something called the friction test it's like a machine that has a wheel and someone will drive down the runway and that wheel will come down and it'll actually measure how much friction there is on the runway the key to our Runway is you want it to have a lot of friction you don't want it to be slippery at all so that measurement of how much friction that wheel feels on the surface of the runway will tell our teams when to go out there to remove the rubber now to do that we have specialized Machinery which is like a massive truck with a Hoover on top of it and so it's high pressure water basically but very hot and it blasts the tarmac and then it just sucks up everything that comes off it and removal of rubber Pilots to bring planes in safely of course they use ILS systems they use the instrument Landing system when coming into land but they still need a visual reference so from a safety perspective the pilots physically won't be able to see those lights and I once spoke to a pilot who was flying in from Scandinavia and I remember I always go to the pilots and speak to them about this stuff afterwards because I want to get their perspective and I said to him what's it like to fly a plane at an airport and land the plane at an airport which doesn't maintain its lights very well he said it's like trying to fly a plane into a black hole so for the lights themselves we do a test where we measure how much light output comes out of the lights so we have this trailer that hooks onto the back of the car and the sensors on the back of this trailer will tell you exactly how much light is coming out of every single light and then you get all that data and you can tell which lights have rubber on them so the lights are really important they need to be bright so to do that we have another machine which uses dry soda and it has somebody on the back with a lots and they go from one light to another and they point this thing at it and they shoot powder this soda powder at the actual lens of the light and they get rid of all the rubber that is on those lights from when the last plane takes off at 9 the first plane takes off in the morning there's a small window of time our runways need to close so we need to wait till the last plane departs and then after the last plane departs that's when our teams can come on so if you wanted to clean every single light on the runway you can't really do it all in one night because there's that many of them so for the lights themselves uh we remove it at least twice per week this is something that people don't ever really think about but there's a whole team of people whose responsibility is to make sure that these runways are clear and actually people benefit from this job all the time because the only way that they're able to go on holiday and enjoy the world is by using these strips of tarmac called the runways this is Bach an explosive detection k9 for the Transportation Security Administration or TSA ready personally I feel if my dog screened that person that I would put myself my family or my mom on that plane my dog is that good that nothing has come past him every day Bach and his Handler Gary will screen between three and four thousand passengers for explosives at Philadelphia International Airport but before Bach and Gary started working together as an explosives detection team very good rather feather nice they spent 16 weeks training here at the TSA canine training center at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio Texas the TSA National explosives detection canine program graduates more than 300 dogs and more than 150 handlers every year they train and mock airplanes and airport terminals where they learn crucial techniques they'll have to master before graduating there is nothing more effective out there in all of tsa's Arsenal a well-trained dog team is truly a force multiplier that really combats terrorism there are more than 1 000 TSA canine teams deployed Nationwide the starting pay for a Handler is about forty three thousand dollars a year so the first thing where we start is teaching the dog the basic fundamentals of how to use their nose to find something and luckily for us dogs already naturally do that so we just manipulate the environment so we can tap into their natural abilities one of those environments is a mock wide body aircraft similar to one that they might encounter in the real world foreign a two-year-old Belgian Malinois was around 20 days into training the dogs are first taught to search for their favorite toy and are rewarded once they find it oh you got it good man you got it puppy you got it again we buy these dogs for drive that dog is going to want that toy oh good man good man it's good memes so as you can see we're just kind of using the reward to shape the behavior getting him used to going in searching the rules about 160 dogs are in training at any given time and they come in all shapes and sizes through years of trials and tribulations we have honed in on essentially seven different breeds so you have your Belgian Malinois your German Shepherds we also have the Labrador Retrievers the German Shorthair pointers the vizlas those type of dogs and we found that they have the innate ability both cognitively and with their olfactory that we have a lot of positive results with those specific breedsy as the dogs progress trainers introduce training AIDS filled with explosive materials and reward the dogs for finding them oh foreign this dog poopy a two-year-old German short-haired pointer was 70 days into training the repeated exercises the dogs learned that detecting the odor earns them their toy and begins searching for the odor itself we condition them that this piece that you're looking for means a whole lot and we use the toy to do that so as the dogs going through and they're searching and sniffing when they catch that odor that scent their body reacts as if we just gave them a toy so we teach our dogs what's called a passive final response so once they have worked and located something we teach them to either go into a sit or a doubt oh good man the roots of the program date back to March 7 1972 when a bomb threat was called in on a TWA Flight right after it took off from JFK International Airport forcing the plane to turn around and land a team through the New York Police Department trained to detect explosives happened to be at JFK at the same time this canine named Brandy went on to the aircraft conducted a search and alerted to what looked to be a pilot's briefcase adjacent to the cockpit explosive Ordnance disposal came in grabbed the briefcase and disarmed it 12 minutes before it exploded that same day President Nixon ordered the creation of the FAA explosives detection canine team which was transferred to the TSA following its Creation in response to the terrorist attacks on September 11 2001 and through the years we have continued to grow as a program today the TSA trains its dogs to be able to detect dozens of different scents based on recent intelligence unfortunately we're unable to specifically speak to the quantities of explosives that these dogs are trained to find but we want them to be super good at specific explosives based on the threat go puppy good puppy I Like It Puppy after six to eight weeks of working with the trainers the dogs are introduced to their future handlers whom they'll finish the program with handlers in training come from across the country and must meet certain criteria in order to be accepted into the program I'll tell you it's very competitive to get into canine because there's a lot of responsibility seeing our dogs at our airport what they were capable of doing and I was in awe and so I started researching up on them and found out that's definitely what I wanted to partake as my next step in my career handlers get paired with a dog three to four weeks into their training we try to get to know our students in and out and we also know our dogs and what their abilities are they have to be able to rely on each other if you don't have a good pairing between the dog and the Handler it's just not going to work this is Uber he is a two-year-old German Shepherd he's a rambunctious man but he's a cool partner to work with Jessica and ubal are part of the tsa's 16-week passenger screening course which is five weeks longer than the traditional explosives detection course remember the feather walk straight don't let him walk you at an angle up straight hold the ground hold your ground walk straight very good working in a simulated Airport terminal complete with actors posing as bystanders K-9 teams practice screening passengers for explosive odors that have been placed on certain role players basically we have the Personnel come through a line we call it cutting awakes so the dog will cut past the person left and right and hopefully pick up whatever odor that they're trained on all right about to bring the odor in once they encountered the odor to train on the Handler will turn around and follow the dog and reward the dog for a good behavior let it better let it feather feather speed up for it yeah all right tear them up praise him up doing well on a train I look for two things I look for the drive of the dogs the dog able to commit to follow the person that has whatever it is trying to detect and then I watch the Handler's hand says the Handler holding the dog back or is the Handler releasing the leash to allow the dog to proceed you control this if he's standing out here and you're not ready hold my line please flip him back around get him how you want him release line and then do your thing the most common mistake is the least control if you walk in your household dog on a leash you let the dog be a dog do whatever you want but when you're doing this type of training with the dog on leash it's a balance of when to have control when not to have control nice nice work nice work good hit they did outstanding again this is on the day 13. they throwing these two dogs for 13 days and to be able to allow the dog and read that behavior it's very good handlers and their dogs graduate and are deployed as a team so their ability to work together is crucial it's definitely a lot of fun seeing it click for the dog and watch them learn along with you or with me so it's been a really cool experience the dogs received 24 to 32 weeks of training and roughly 90 percent of all K-9 teams graduate from the Course once they do they'll be deployed to one of the many mass transit sites across the United States all right go work like Gary sterley and Bach see team graduated from the TSA K-9 Training Center in 2016 and have been working at the Philadelphia International Airport ever since clock is a nine-year-old flat coated Retriever Shepherd mix he's a goofball he's a character he definitely has a lot to say to everybody he loves people he loves the job he wakes up every morning ready to go he has found ammunition he has found he has found a few things that's really as far as I can go ready Kosik God when we're working together I'm focusing on making sure he is productively sniffing the wake of passengers so as they're going by the odor coming off of Passenger to the odor plume is coming behind and dropping down to the ground so I'm just watching him watching his nose in his head looking for subtle changes that might indicate that he's picking up on something the team also performs daily training exercises good boy go find it where is it huh where is it so today we had a decoy so we put a training aid on the decoys sent the decoy in with passengers dog pinpoints it good boy thank you Maya box changer Behavior can range depending on the day but when he starts spinning around in a circle when we're working he's on to something he wants to go find it so the dog it's all the same it's a giant game to the dog as long as they think they're going to get the reward they'll go anywhere you tell them to go box part of my family comes home he's with me 24 hours a day even when we go on vacation and he's in the kennel I'm calling the kennel to make sure he's okay evacuate evacuate leave everything go back you could have no obstruction no fire no water go to open your exit and it doesn't work it's jammed a lot of the times I think the perception is that we're waitresses in the sky first and foremost we are safety professionals anything that can happen on the ground can happen in the air come this way leave everything my name is Patrice Hillis and my name is trilene bundridge my nickname is Trill we're here to show you what it takes to be a Delta Airlines flight attendant a lot of magic happens down here in the training center over 195 000 applications come into Delta Airlines and of those 3 000 for this year alone will get to come through these doors and be a Delta Airlines flight attendant initial flight attendant training is six weeks of intense training they start here in week one and they learn about the foundations of Delta Airlines and then we go to week three and those are non-phase specific things like Security emergency management medical situations that could happen on board the aircraft and then week six it's all about customer service and So within those six weeks we have a fully rounded Delta Airlines flight isn't it who is ready to go out there on any aircraft this area is what we call our mock-up areas and these are aircraft that have been cut out from the desert they've shipped them here and our flight attendants go into these mock-ups and they practice different types of scenarios a lot of what we do is very customer service driven flight attendants are able to balance that customer service piece as well as being mindful of any type of emergency situation that could happen on board the aircraft studio is where we have all of our doors windows tail cone exits they'll talk through an evacuation here after we've boarded the aircraft we're ready to go Trail is going to arm this store which means if we open the door arms we're going to get slide deployments when we practice our evacuation we want the door to be armed all right troll you ready no pressure uh no pressure here we go three four bend over stay down stay seated stay seated she's thinking about her commands where her exits are she's thinking about how to operate those exits where her Emergency Equipment is she's also thinking about people that got on board that could help her in an emergency you help at the bottom you help at the bottom and she's also going to think about the people that got on who might need her assistance we do want thinking flight attendants we do operate with a lot of checklists but in the end sometimes things come down to a judgment call we travel to different time zones to different countries and maybe we can't sleep and then you're expected to make good judgment calls and you're expected to remember all your training and respond to emergencies and be Delta gracious and patient and all of that on lack of sleep as well sometimes [Music] we are going to head to our motion based trainer it is our one and only trainer that does Shake does move our flight attendants have a week of training for emergencies that could happen on board the aircraft and learning our different types of commands this is one of them evacuate come this way leave everything jump and slide if you don't stay calm then your anxiety will feed off of that person it's definitely important to make sure you stay calm now Welcome to our ditching mock-up we have a 767 mock-up and the flight attendants have a life vest and they jump right in and they work together as a team to handle ditching getting into a raft helping each other stay warm while they're waiting for rescue we like to take flight attendants train them in these particular scenarios with the hope that they can take that knowledge and transfer it out to a real live aircraft and when those situations happen in real life their training kicks in one of our most common emergencies is medical emergencies when there's someone who has a heart attack in the aisle I know where the medical equipment is on board the aircraft and I'm fully able to handle those types of situations are you okay are you okay I'm Patrice I'm a flight attendant I can help typically on the aircraft there would be three of us involved in this scenario there would be an assessor a collector and a communicator I was the assessor troll was my collector she brought me my equipment and then she stayed with me the whole time the third person that we would usually have is our Communicator Communicator is going to be talking to the flight deck they're going to be paging for medical assistance they're going to be trying to get in touch with stat MD they're going to be filling out our medical assistance form or helping us to do that in some way clear stop now clear not touch the patient anything that can happen on the ground can happen in the air so we have to be mindful of always being gracious but in the back of our mind always thinking of the other things that could possibly happen on board the aircraft and knowing that we're fully trying to handle any type of situation flight attendants have to maintain a 90 average within the six assessments that they take but once a flight attendant leaves and graduates and is a flight attendant flying out there on the line their training isn't over we have something called continuing qualification and that is where flight attendants that are qualified and out there flying have to re-qualify every 18 months they come back to training and they do have to be proficient in their door evacuations in their EMV scenarios CPR 6 security we do hold them to a pretty high standard and so being calm being patient is something that we learn and we also give feedback on so that when they are on the line as an active flight attendant they're able to handle any situation each year more than a hundred and eighty thousand flights take off for Emirates Airline carrying about 60 million passengers and the people in charge of all those Travelers on board the 21 000 flight attendants and pursers that make up Emirates cabin crew it's a pretty sweet gig free housing in Dubai discounted tickets and getting paid to travel the world but with long hours and busy schedules the job is not always as glamorous as you'd think here's what it's like to be a flight attendant for Emirates my name is Siti nuraslin and I am a first class crew working for Emirates like the 200 000 applicants a year CT had to meet the airline's qualifications a minimum age of 21 years old a height of at least five foot two an arm reach of about seven feet on tiptoes to reach those overhead bins fluency in English at least a high school degree and no visible tattoos when in uniform just like every other new hire CT started her Emirates career at the bottom an economy on short-haul flights and through the years she's worked her way up to first class today she Crews an average of nine long-haul flights a month her schedule changes every week but she's always on flights that last anywhere from 6 to 16 hours and for a lot of that time CT is on her feet she estimates about 11 hours out of a 16-hour flight the job could be quite challenging physically so we need to maintain our physique and also be like quite fit but thankfully she's not in heels the whole time we do change our uniform after takeoff so we get to put on our Flats because the high heels won't get really comfortable in 16 hours and we change into our waistcoat CT is also required to look the part usually we keep to a natural makeup like eyeliner and mascara usually is a must and you know the Emirates red lipstick definitely and just like makeup hairstyles jewelry and nails are also pretty strict as for jewelry they can wear diamond or Pearl stud earrings but no necklace and their nails have to be clean with either a nude or red polish or a French manicure now these requirements are for female flight attendants males have to be clean shaven and style their hair with minimal product but there's an added level responsibility for first class attendance like CT for starters she knows who the regular Flyers are and what they like we do have information on our customers so on every flight we will observe the preferences and the likes and dislikes of the customers so we get to write it down for future flights for example like pajama size or via prefit drinks so the more someone flies with Emirates the more we can cater to the personal preference she's also required to have an expert understanding of the entire first class menu she knows options for passengers with dietary restrictions the perfect wine pairing for dishes and the tasting notes of 60 cheeses and since she's typically serving International Travelers CT is a master at communicating across different backgrounds but she's not the only one like most of the cabin crew CT knows more than one language for her it's English and Malay but there are over 60 languages spoken across Emirates cabin crew and a staff of 140 nationalities now on board CT's Duties are pretty standard do a safety check of the plane before passengers board provide food and drink service during the flight and go through the cabin after everyone d-boards but off the plane the perks of the job are substantial flight attendants get a base pay depending on experience with an hourly rate stacked on top starting out that equals about thirty two thousand dollars a year plus they get free housing in Dubai not far from the airport they get 30 vacation days one free flight a year and can nominate friends and family for discounted tickets the perks of this job especially would be the concessionary ticket that we get and not just for me but for my family and friends as well so I don't really have to travel on my own or travel with just my crew friends I can travel with my friends who are not flying as well for the veteran and first class flight attendants they even get to staff events like the U.S open or make special appearances but the best part layovers in 161 cities worldwide with accommodation and meals covered Ardell 2452 container Juliet Mike delima Charlie moderate to the tower one two three point eight five four hundred feet above Atlanta Hartsfield Airport air traffic controllers oversee the Skies of the world's busiest airport firing off commands to Pilots Delta 393 Atlanta holds short attacks away Dixie they juggle 20 cheers a day in all kinds of weather you can go upstairs and you can look out of that window and you can see nothing at all and still have movement taking place on your airport but air traffic controllers can't mess up not only are lives on the line but this is the ultimate in Domino effects if something's going wrong in Atlanta if there are major delays it disrupts air travel all throughout the country and parts of the world back in February before covid was named a pandemic rally took us up inside the tallest control tower in the country to see what it really takes to be an air traffic controller this is Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport and these are its five runways and here's the control tower it takes a rotating staff of 58 traffic controllers to keep the airport running pre-pandemic they directed 909 000 flights through takeoff and Landing each year these controllers are responsible for any planes inside Atlanta Hartsfield airspace five miles out and four thousand feet above the airport once a plane enters Atlanta's territory air traffic controllers are in charge of communicating with Pilots over radio they direct pilots in the air through safe Landings and pilots on the ground through takeoffs the goal efficiency efficiency efficiency what can you do to help us be more efficient well the one thing that we're not going to do is make sure that you compromise safety in that equation but the job isn't easy there's a lot of dynamic decisions if an aircraft is coming into land and they have to go around because of an unstable approach the weather didn't cooperate they couldn't get the runway in sight you have to be ready to make a decision to become a fully qualified controller it can take up to five years of classroom simulator and on-the-job training but if they make it the average controller in Georgia makes 145 000 a year a job in Atlanta's Tower is one of the most coveted ATC positions missions in the US candidates go through a rigorous hiring process which can take somewhere just under a year we're getting closer to six to nine months once they've been hired incoming controllers start on the simulator so any new controller that would come here they would initially come here and do book work and then follow up with the book work they would come in the simulator room a new controller will do multiple pass fail scenarios but on the simulator they'll have fewer planes to juggle than the real deal in the tower then they'll have an evaluation and then if they pass that evaluation they can head up to the towers we have two controllers working there today one of them is in training there's never really a slow period to speak of though air traffic always picks up in the summer and days before and after holidays but whether it's Christmas Eve or just another Tuesday controllers have to stay focused I don't know that we want people to be comfortable we want people to be on edge we want people to be at the top of their game controllers have to remember and monitor up to 30 planes at once that's a lot to think about especially since studies show the human brain can only handle seven things in short-term memory at a time it had about 25 to 30 aircraft all on my frequency at one time they're all taxing out for departure but once I said monitor the tower one two three point eight five that's when they got off my frequency so you know at one time you could have a lot then one minute later it could be all gone the job's so mentally draining that the Federal Aviation Administration allows controllers to work for only two hours before they're required to take a break to help make their work easier controllers jobs in the tower are highly specific each Runway is assigned either take off or Landings that controller is just focused on that Runway that specific Runway and that specific one-way only the controller who clears planes for takeoff or Landing is called the local controller there are two or three of them in the tower at once this gentleman's working what we call local five and local five is handling at the moment all the arrival aircraft coming in from the East then there's the ground controller this guy focuses on directing traffic on the ground telling planes which Runway to taxi to so in the case of an approach and Landing it might start with the local control saying this to the pilot it'll be built to 222 Runway eight left when calm clear land we'll turn it over to the ground controller as they exit Delta 222 contact ground 119.2 they'll go over to Ground Control Ground Control tell them which direction to taxi to get them over to the ramp have Universal rules to follow to make sure everyone is safe first there's the lingo all right 1123 decks of ramp keep moving traffic behind you have a good day the international language for air traffic control is English they also have special terminologies so no two words will get confused Runway two civil rights follow Southwest the guys at Chicago O'Hare or pdk or Atlanta Tower say the same things for most of our control instructions it doesn't deviate and that consistency is what helps us keep Communications down to a minimum minimal talking is important because every plane and every controller our Dell 2452 hear the same radio frequency and they're all in the same telephone call 15 airplanes here in Atlanta short calls aren't the only way controllers ensure efficiency these strips help the controllers keep track of all the planes moving through that process each one represents a plane it has the flight number the airline the city the planes going to or coming from and the departure or arrival time once the flight plan is generated at its proposed time as you've seen right here these will print out this flight Delta 1904 is an international flight it's going from Atlanta down to Marigold so Delta 904 and this aircraft here is a Boeing 757 200 this airplane is scheduled to depart at 1542 Zulu winning departs he's gonna he's requesting to go to 37 000 feet so this strip would then once it's ready to place it in one of these strip holders so you'd find the Delta 904 which is at Echo nine they Place Echo 9 on here and slide it to the appropriate side a controller will have four or five of these strips active at once this is how they sequence the planes in order of priority the passenger doesn't see the bigger picture the pilot thinks I've been sitting here why the reason why he's holding is because we're trying to provide that sequence so that we can get maximum capacity out at one time sequencing can help move planes along quicker but how exactly does it work here's an example if two planes are going the same direction say to San Antonio and Houston they have to be at least four miles apart so they don't run into each other in the sky which means time waiting between takeoffs but if a controller Alters the sequence using those strips so in this case this is a West a north and a West this aircraft's going to San Antonio this aircraft's going to Milwaukee and this aircraft's going to Houston so we can depart 6 000 feet down the runway and airborne and roll all these that Milwaukee flight can take off right behind the San Antonio flight and now they've had three planes take off in the same amount of time it makes a big difference for the ground controller to actually provide a good sequence because it's efficient and the aircraft could keep going at the fastest rate and that's what we do and that's our job efficiency means fewer delays if there are major delays it disrupts air travel all throughout the country and parts of the world in 2018 Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport was ranked the best airport in the U.S for flight delays with the highest percentage of on-time departures 15 airplanes we're looking at a minute behind one another so it's not bad 15 minutes but of course some things are out of their control you can go upstairs and you can look up out of that window and you can see nothing at all and still have movement taking place on your airport then there's days like today clearing a million that's what we call it when it's a beautiful sunshine day and you can see forever we can move a whole bunch of airplanes it's 132 an hour I believe is our arrival rate Max on a typical day we try to stay right around in the 120s controllers also have to contend with inclement weather sometimes planes can't land on their first attempt so they'll have to pull up Circle back and get in line to land again you have to be ready to make a decision how am I going to get this airplane back up into the air back over to the next air traffic control facility so that they can resequence them back into our pattern luckily some technological advancements have made this whole process a lot easier remember those strips so a lot of this is automated now while controllers may still use the physical strips they also show up on monitors and are automatically sent over to the next controller in the sequence also technology means weather isn't as debilitating as it once was there used to be one at a time when weather would shut your airport down but now being able to forecast and project when that weather is coming we're not surprised like we used to be we go in the clouds sometimes and that's when our equipment is is all we got as DX radar and GPS positioning help controllers track a plane we're able to use that technology now to actually separate and identify where those airplanes are legitimately so we can use the term clear for takeoff even though we can't see the physical Runway any longer but all that technology doesn't mean these controllers can be any less diligent they have to be focused and undistracted Non-Stop this is the busiest airport in the world the number the volume I don't think many airports can handle what we do that's the truth to all 3 800 daily flights across the world but it's not easy as sometimes they only have about 30 minutes in between flights to spray the cabin and wipe every surface we follow the Delta cleaning crew for a day to see what goes into sanitizing a plane before a flight since passengers are in close quarters airplanes are normally considered high-risk transmission areas our challenge is now I think continued to just be restoring the customer's confidence I think we're making Headway but I think there's still a long way to go it all starts with the uniform workers stood up to protect themselves from the charge sanitizer and the virus itself the liquid held in a backpack by container is a disinfectant approved by the Environmental Protection Agency and it's similar to Clorox it can kill any pathogens including coronaviruses that are lingering in the air or stuck on a surface Delta Airlines implemented this process in February I think we very quickly pivoted from feeling a sense of loss to feeling a sense of challenge how long it takes to clean depends on the size of the plane the larger ones can take at least an hour or more and if the flying crew doesn't feel safe they can ask for another cleaning anyone can be involved to inspect the aircraft for cleanliness and anyone has the ability to raise their hand and say the airplane's not clean we can't board already have my boarding pass undertaking okay there's also a new process at check-in there is Plexiglas between employees and passengers Delta contractors wipe every touchscreen after a person uses it flight attendants have changed their routines too as I lead my cruise and I do my briefing I try to let them know that the perception of cleanliness is everything it's not enough for us to go in there and clean the restrooms if the passengers don't see us doing it we want you to see that we're going in there every 30 minutes and we're checking those labs we're wiping down all surfaces we're serving you with gloves we're offering you Pro raw wipes we're doing so many different things for your safety they offer passengers a Ziploc bag with water snacks and hand sanitizer middle seats are blocked to separate passengers Delta says error on the aircraft recirculates every two to six minutes through industrial grade HEPA filters with similar performance to those used in operating rooms since March the airline industry has been hit hard before the pandemic around 2 million passengers a day flew Nationwide on about 25 000 flights after the pandemic the number of passengers dropped to under a million and the number of domestic fights went down to about 9 000 flights a day as part of Delta's commitment to the care and well-being of our customers and employees we are taking the following extra steps to promote a safe and healthy plan many airlines laid off a lot of their staff DOTA says it has not had furloughs but made some employees take unpaid leave when you think about March 11th using that as a benchmark I think we were operating close to 200 flights that day you know and by the end of April we were down to 12 here at JFK flights have increased since May but the number of passengers remains under 1 million for the most part it's going to be a long recovery and it's going to be a choppy recovery and I think part of that is because we will continue to see Ebbs and flows of the virus it's estimated that more than a hundred thousand workers have left the airline industry since the pandemic started and entire companies like ExpressJet Airlines have also vanished flight attendant Richard Brown says he feels lucky to have his job even if he faces the risk of getting sick coming back I was kind of apprehensive but I was also ready to come back because I had been sitting at my house in lockdown for several months at that time so I was kind of anxious and I was antsy and I was ready to go back the new cleaning routines have offered him some relief and confidence I've never felt safer and that's because of everything that we're doing there's been such an attention to detail now and it's not that there wasn't an attention to that detail before but there's a renewed focus on cleanliness there is some evidence that fine may not be as dangerous as we initially believed Studies have found that as long as passengers wear a mask flying can be safer than grocery shopping but take those studies with a grain of salt since many have been funded by the airline industry and there are also risks of transmission at the airport when people are standing at security or check-in lines and most Airlines don't require people to test negative for covid-19 before flying meanwhile cases of coronavirus are hitting new records in the U.S the airlines themselves admit that nothing they can do will bring back passengers until the pandemic improves we're not really concerned about the expenses because the most important thing to us is restoring the customer's confidence and knowing that until customers get confident in the in the flying process they're not going to come back and and we're going to have to spend money to get them in that place to do so when a regular traveler arrives in the U.S they're required to declare any food items they're bringing in or face up to a thousand dollar fine for the first offense items aren't taken because agents want to eat your yummy Spanish ham or Caribbean mangoes it's because agents are responsible for protecting American agriculture from any foreign pests or diseases that could affect our livestock or crops and that's where agricultural Specialists like ginger come in everything gets destroyed to protect against that pestic we are protecting the country's agricultural interests we're protecting against bioterrorism where someone could intentionally try to bring in items to wreak havoc in this country foreign bugs hitchhiking in luggage have wreaked havoc in the U.S before Florida's orange and grapefruit Growers lost 2.9 billion dollars from 2007 to 2014. thanks to the Asian citrus psyllid and since being introduced into the US in the 90s the Asian longhorn beetle has ravaged hardwood trees eradication efforts between 1997 and 2010 cost more than 373 million dollars in our country we go into the grocery store and the food is always there we don't have to look at it for holes or check if it's got some disease on it it always looks great so we get kind of spoiled and we don't really understand the importance of protecting men so it's crucial that even a single stowaway orange is found and confiscated but with 34 million annual International passengers to and from JFK going through each of those bags can seem pretty impossible for humans that is luckily they've got a Little Help from the Beagle Brigade this four-legged officer is biscuit and like Spike biscuit is trained in passive response but biscuits trained to sniff out food rather than drugs they actually learned they start out with five Target holders and then over the years he'll expand and they retire with sometimes like 150 olders that they know and Biscuit's pretty good at sniffing these beagles have an estimated 90 accuracy rate watching your dog sit on three grapes in a Samsonite hardside suitcase is just incredible scientists say their nose is a thousand times stronger than ours and they prove it every single day once biscuits miss out an item the passenger in question and their bags go to Ginger who will X-ray and search the luggage okay these are both your bags correct okay did you pack everything yourselves you pack your bags yourself okay Ginger unzips the bag and searches each one by hand and if she finds something that's not allowed it seized and held in temporary bins this is very common from that region once you open it all up you have grape leaves these are horse meat sausages this is another very good example of what we get very frequently especially in the springtime this is a plant that they're planning on bringing here to grow so anything for propagation has additional entry requirements so this is two families worth from one flight JFK disposes of the Contraband food in one of two ways the grinder or the incinerator Ginger will bag up the seized items and label them based on their final destination so we're gonna go walk this bin nice and full from those two passengers down to our Contraband room this is the room where illicit food meets its end [Music] this is our grinding machine this is what we'll generally use for fruits vegetables that kind of Commodities it is called the muffin monster but before Ginger can send a piece of fruit down the muffin monster she cuts it open squishes it and inspects it she's looking for evidence of diseases insertion points for insects and exit points for larvae if she finds a little bug like this one she neutralizes the pest risk and sends it to the U.S department of Agriculture for further investigation now it's back to the muffin monster 120 pounds of food are grinded up each day from arriving International passengers avocados mangoes and citrus are among the most common fruits that end up in the grinder we do get messy it's important to dispose of it properly I love to eat as much as everybody else I'm a big fan of food but I know the importance of making sure that what we seized because of established risks is disposed of properly to prevent it from causing problems so the next time you've got an orange tucked into your luggage declare it and let experts like ginger decide if it's immiscible and leave the Serrano ham in Spain because Biscuit will find it this building it's almost living and breathing every day American Airlines loads up 715 000 pounds of cargo onto planes and Dallas Fort Worth is home to the airline's largest cargo operation live animals food PPE and Legos end up on flights headed as far as Shanghai or Frankfurt but getting the right cargo on the right plane in time for takeoffs is no easy task it takes a team of 220 people to haul and fit thousands of pounds of freight into planes it's 100 miles an hour there's no ramp up immediately you're drinking from a fire hose that's Mark he took us inside Americans 170 1 000 square foot cargo facility to see how Crews keep cargo flying even as kova 19 halts air traffic around the globe to keep moving Freight American Airlines launch cargo only routes for the first time in 36 years in 2020 the airline sent out 5 000 cargo only flights across 39 new routes the massive cargo facility in Dallas is located here at the airport it's broken down into inbound cargo here and outbound cargo here the outbound Center handles shipments from trucks that will then be loaded onto planes some trucks come from as far as Guadalajara and Mexico City this is the drop-off dock back in the back and so that's where the shipments will come in goods are unloaded and go right into the tracking system that way the low planners can see how much price you're planning for a departure there's an army of forklifts and we'll try to keep you safe while you're here a lot of PPE personal protective equipment lately ventilators latex gloves Laffy Taffy but this is from Sao Paulo Brazil just like passengers and their bags go through airport security so does cargo they come over here and they go through screening every piece of cargo gets screened workers are looking for anything that doesn't belong once everything is screened the goods are moved to their designated locations in the warehouse even animals yeah in 2019 American moved 40 000 animals so It's Not Unusual to see to pick him up little Joey fruits veggies herbs and flowers head over to one of these three fridges before most of our fresh fruits and vegetables come from Mexico or Central America sometimes from South America next week we have about 20 000 pounds of blackberries going to London this area is for human remains we take care of our veterans when they're fallen soldiers that are very meaningful that we do ship and finally any oversized cargo heads to this section a few hours before departure time the cargo is tugged to a build station so here we're seeing that they're building up Freight for one of our outbound departures onto a PMC workers build up cargo on these aluminum pallets called pmcs using the expertise that he's developed over time he's looking at each shipment and deciding what's the most efficient way that I can build this but they can't build the freight any taller than 65 inches so it can still fit through the airplane door you never know if it's going to be raining in London when you get there so we protect everything from the elements by wrapping it in plastic so they'll have plastic on the bottom they'll put plastic over the top wrap those two together and then put the cargo net over it to restrain everything if it's food flowers or herbs they're loaded into temperature controlled containers they have batteries that maintain the temperature inside the unit it's like shipping a refrigerator these bundles of cargo once built are called Unit load devices or ulds each uld goes to be weighed a single container can't be over 3 500 pounds but the pallets can hold even more weight while it depends on weather routes and if passengers are on board a Boeing triple seven 300 can carry up to 125 000 pounds of cargo anymore and the plane could struggle to take off so it takes a lot of knowledge of the weight and dimensions of every plane to get this right a lot of expertise in the building and many of these guys have 40 years or more finally the ulds are loaded onto tugs and driven out to the plane so this is what we call the backyard this is where we stage wide body cargo that's ready to go to the aircraft and so all of these Lanes have a letter in our system we can see what Lane they're in so that the drivers know what to go get and what to take to the aircraft is the London departure that we were watching them build the Freight Fort earlier today it's all right there about to be loaded on this Boeing 787 workers have three doors they can load cargo through the front and aft or back doors are the biggest the cargo is brought up to the height of the plane using a lift the lift and the plane have rollers on the floor to easily move the heavy load this is the hard part it's like a game of Tetris trying to figure out what combinations of containers and pallets will fit snugly but a plan helps teams figure out where each uld should go to best use the space and balance out the weight on the plane after everything's in the right place there's floor locks that come up and they keep the cargo from shifting through the smaller door in the back which we call the AFT bulk workers load any bulk cargo that's anything that's not built into a container or onto a pallet that's typically where we're going to put live animals or really anything that is connecting to this flight and all this has to happen quickly consumers expectations as far as delivery times continue to increase right we want our Goods faster on average workers have about an hour to load and lock all the ulds and any free loaded cargo before the plane takes off and this whole process happens in Reverse for incoming planes carrying cargo the Freights off the aircraft our runner will come and pick it up and take it back to our cargo facility from there it goes through our breakdown process where we take it all off of the pmcs and separate it based on airway bill number and then from there we staged it in one of those locations that we saw earlier so that whenever the customer arrives we can load it on their vehicle and we have four hours from the economy aircraft walks in until it's got to be ready for the customers to pick up in 2019 American Airlines cargo moved 122 million pounds of freight every day but coronavirus made it harder in 2020 the airline averaged only 101 million pounds daily when passenger volume drops 75 in April the airline cut passenger routes that usually carry cargo fewer routes also meant fewer direct flights that led to a lot more cargo connecting through Dallas might have originated in Asia or Europe you know and he's passing on to Latin America and that introduces a lot of additional complexity you have to physically handle the freight a lot more often but cardo still needs to be moved even if the world has stopped traveling we live in a globalized world where not every country produces everything they need from cell phones to laptops to clothes to food relies on Air Cargo Transportation but even with the introduction of cargo only flights the airline has still lost billions it's a drop in the ocean but in no way does the the additional cargo Revenue that we're generating offset the 75 drop in passenger revenues that we've been seeing this year no big surprise we're going to post losses next year so until passenger traffic returns to normal American plans to continue flying and packing these cargo only flights the goal obviously ultimately hopefully quickly is for those aircraft to return to passenger service probably a theme going into next year will be that everything's fluid and we have to remain flexible [Music] at Delta Technical operations in Atlanta at nearly 3 million square feet it's the biggest aircraft repair shop in North America here mechanics technicians and Engineers fix nearly a thousand planes a year with all kinds of issues from a loose screw to an engine failure but it takes a lot more than elbow grease to get a plane back in the air this is a bustling and expensive 24-hour operation the work never stops because the the planes never stop that's Cedric back in February before covid-19 was declared a pandemic he took us behind the scenes of Delta's massive airplane hospital let me put my Bob cap on I look like somebody Delta Tech Ops is a maintenance repair and overhaul or mro business we do everything that you see on that aircraft we have component maintenance engine maintenance and aircraft maintenance 6 000 technicians can fix every inch of pretty much any commercial jet on the planet from 150 other airlines government organizations and even military branches our job is basically just to maintain the aircraft keep them safe an aircraft ends up here if it's scheduled for maintenance or if something is wrong and one of the biggest issues the team deals with is engine repairs when that happens there's 32 million dollars on the line [Music] first a plane is grounded and then tugged into this giant Hangar we can have six wide bodies and six narrow bodies in simultaneously so that's a lot of work that can be done in here at the same time technicians run a diagnosis for an engine problem if they determine it needs fixing it heads to the engine shop this division of tech Ops started in 1961. at the beginning of the jet age today engine repair is the most expensive section of tech Ops with a hundred million dollars in new facilities just in the last two years so the engines come into our shop and we take the engines apart completely we inspect the parts and anything that we find wrong with them we are able to repair those things before putting them back into the engine these are very high value parts so repairing them is the most economical way to keep our engines flying the four parts can be fixed up they get a chemical bath so most of the engine parts are cleaned in this area if there's any contaminants on the blades or any of the parts of the aircraft you want to make sure that's removed so you can get maximum performance of the engine because of the airflow yeah I used to work back here many years ago I started back here next the engine heads to one of Seven Bays in the engine shop what's going on how you doing why is everybody got a smile on their face that's what I want to know y'all are like y'all happy how you doing what are you doing here FAA licensed technicians work on and reassemble the engine we have approximately 900 engines a year come through for various levels of Maintenance those cover 14 different kinds of engines I want to show everybody a br-715 engine so this engine in particular is undergoing Light maintenance where it doesn't get fully disassembled Light maintenance takes anywhere from 15 to 35 days heavy maintenance on the other hand that's where we'd fully disassemble the engine go into the internal areas of the engine and basically refurbish the entire components associated with the engine that can take over two months 2 000 piece parts that have to be individually inspected and maintained this engine is flying approximately five times a day an engine remains on Wing from anywhere from a few years to some of our engine types as many as seven or eight or nine years so we want to take the opportunity while they're here to do everything that we can to ensure that they're reliable for the fleet if an engine can stay in the air longer it saves zelta and its customers money remember these things are expensive and so are all the parts that go into them this part costs twelve thousand dollars and there's 80 of them add in the price of the surrounding parts and we're looking at about 2.2 million dollars sitting on the table this is the highest technology portion of the engine these blades operate at very high temperatures and very high stresses these fan blades out of the latest generation Rolls-Royce Trent engines are made of precious metals and Alloys and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars each so a modern jet engine is worth several million dollars the maintenance of those is very very important to maintaining the value of that asset only about 20 of all the engines fixed here are deltas the rest are for customers that's probably UPS right there we have Azure gold Brazil and Virgin Australia engines repairing all these flying beasts takes a lot of skill and caution in anything can kill you that we touch everything is stronger than us everything is is heavier than us you have to have your head in the game you're looking at a 13 000 pound engine lifting something that heavy it requires a lot of safety coordination teamwork and attention and detail but an engine that runs smoothly is just as important there's no pulling over on the side of the road if there's a problem they're 40 000 feet in the air so nothing can go wrong but it's an example of the Precision and the very close tolerances that everything has to be built to because of how fast it all spins and how hot it all gets we want you to get to your destination safely and that's what this is all about to keep track of the thousands of repairs and checks technicians record every step of the disassembly assembly and inspection process on work cards they also rely on fancy gear from the laser welding equipment to the turbine grinder that Precision is necessary to ensure the efficiency of the engine when we return it to service all this new equipment also means Delta can repair some of the most technologically advanced commercial engines in the world that happens out in the newer facility opened in 2018 once technicians have restored all the parts they converge back into one of the engine Bays here they flip the engine vertically and start reassembling it the core engine is complete at this point and they're putting on all of those accessories and harnesses and piping on the outside of the engine but before an engine can go back on a wing there's one more step quality testing that happens at the world's largest engine test cell a short drive or a bike ride from the engine shops you don't want to encounter problems while you're installing an engine on wings so it comes to us we make sure everything's passed off and clear this part of the building is where the engines come in we install and rig the engine so basically we put the test equipment on the engine and get it ready for it to run and then this part of the engine is your actual test Chambers the test chamber is the newest addition to Tech Ops and where the engines are test run it can handle a hundred and fifty thousand pounds of thrust even though no engine actually has that kind of Power Engineers run tests 24 7. monitoring engine performance from the control room the reason we need 24 7 is because of the production coming out of the shops so I can have three engines prepped and ready but I got one test chamber so you know we want to keep that test chamber running and keep it moving so you want to get it in there get it run get it back out so we can move our next engine in once Ken's team signs off on the new engine it's carted back to the hanger secured on the wing and tugged out vote for takeoff as you see there's a lot of things going on behind the scenes that they made this program we're always constantly trying to work to make sure we're safe effective and proficient in what we do that means once we get an aircraft in here we're trying to make sure that we take care of everything that we need to take care of while it's down so we can get out and fly and when it comes back we'll do it all over again thank you

Channel: Business Insider

Views: 1,215,750

Keywords: Business Insider, Business News, Delta Airlines, Emirates Airline, air travel, airplane, flying

Id: NvLWJxSJ1LM

Length: 71min 24sec (4284 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 23 2023