1990 - 'Jet Jockeys' | Inside British Airways (Boeing 747-200 flight)

see we've got some bad weather in India could be very terminal in that area Steve yes all right and then on crop circle cutter in Bangkok what's the load like the aircraft fall there's about three tons fuel available to you and you've got an ad one time of 13:30 GMT and it's finding very much after 25 minutes briefing the crew of speedbird 9 as flight be a double O 9 to Bangkok and Sydney as known load the flight computers for takeoff it takes only 5 minutes for them to load the entire route from Heathrow to Bangkok into the navigation computer new technology has revolutionized their job in virtually every respect on dirt okay hi and would you like some tea Derek I have a cold Big Mike add more data kick off with them yeah I'm sorry I'm Ted deacon Ted hi tell Mina Mina no I'm sleep hi see lemon slice okay miss BAM please yes sure a lot of coke same sort of thing but a spare can mile can give me a cup I put a cup or go fetch it give it here 44 games to go down to this first gallery crossover and then right through to the Rick I decide to reject the take off I'll call stop fully apply the brakes closing the thrust levers first officer Steve booth gives his briefing for takeoff speed break a select all pour up to reverse idle call me inner outer symmetrical powers available it isn't just baggage that the plane is carrying so what have we got in the livestock our six dogs dogs dogs dogs and cats okay thank you very much indeed no a fricative for that then for you I haven't signed it yet he throw a good afternoon speedbird zero zero nine tango eight with Sierra requesting our start the Bangkok Ski verb not a startup approved for Bangkok departure slot one three one zero please Park to Foxtrot departure good afternoon ladies and gentlemen so captain speaking I am taken with my job before this British hour seven four seven two that caucus we are speedbird 9 with 327 passengers on board and 14 in a half tons of freight is eased back from its stand at Heathrow's terminal for 12 minutes late starting three that's the Weibull okay sexy space it master the basic design of the seven four seven is more than twenty years old and the job of its pilots has changed radically in that time they're no longer the jet jockeys of popular imagination the stresses and strains on these pilots are very different from those enjoyed by earlier generations of aviators most of the 300 passengers are quite unaware of the revolution that has taken place in the cockpit into the break position and he's shown on a safety card if you're wearing hi little - they should be removed at this time the helping leave beam across quickly about 9 - job certified onto one on each side for the torture device it's clear to go and it's clear on the approach blowed the line please low the like this Derrick good night go take off to 7:00 right the winds 180 ro1 five knots everybody ready yes standing them up eighty notes I have control me one rotate here up you know they're burnt off two gallons of fuel per second on takeoff now the plane is hand flown by the first officer along a pre-arranged route until over Clacton exactly eight minutes after leaving Heathrow the autopilot is engaged the plane will not be manually flown again until 12 seconds before touchdown in Bangkok the 98% of the flight the plane will fly on autopilot the plane is controlled by a sophisticated series of computers the flight manager system shows on its screen the exact progress the player is making every 747 now has three navigation computers the captain tells the computer the exact position of his departure point and the computer navigates the plane to Bangkok it's the same system that literally found the moon from the space shot and it's been a feedback from the space shot into this sort of navigation nowadays I think most people now generation of children coming to the world know that aeroplanes do fly on autopilot and they don't expect us to see us fighting the controls like James Bond does or in a film or Weymouth no Wayne Willis for three lithography the main part of the pilots job now is to contact each air traffic controller on route and let them know the aircraft's estimated time for passing over set beacons this make sure that there's the right space between planes flying the same route position in the mundane the air traffic controller can tell them to be in various beacons at different times the pilot dials his information into the computers and the autopilot ensures the plane does as its told we're just coming up to Moscow now minutes Moscow flying a airliner is hours and hours of boredom punctuated by moments of stark terror and I think that's a very good way of explaining it yes but there again I enjoy the job enjoy flying and I enjoy the airline life but I can't say I don't get bored yes there are moments on a longboard we do get bored that's so again when you can go off have a rest and perhaps meet the passengers or do something other than sit here and do nothing with flights becoming longer and longer and with much of the actual trying done by computer the job of the pilots and flight engineer is reduced mainly to monitoring the equipment sometimes it's difficult to stay awake I think every pilot that does large time zone changes and asbestos nights down the routes and then has an 11 hour flight like this to go to it's going to feel tired it's going to feel a moment of lack of concentration the thing is to recognize that confident lack of concentration and deal with it before it gets dangerous that is to tell the rest of the crew I'm tired I'd like our little Forty Winks but to get my brain rested when you're all tired and nodding together and you all nod off together I'm not saying that we do time to come when you are tired that I'm not up there those people know one way of sitting in time is to eat thank you very much that's lovely very much indeed the crew gets specially cooked meals and to avoid any possibility of food poisoning they all have a different main course at the time I was going through is tornado or bust our source with the increased automation has come real concerned about the way the pilots job is evolving basically if you put someone in a dark cramped environment and they're tired because they've been up for extended hours and they're flying at night and you're given nothing to do it's very hard to keep the eyes open and in fact what happens is they not off and the danger is that you truly have a totally automated plane with no human oversight of it in that case dr. Martin more'd is a world expert in the study of sleep patterns he's conducted experiments with other workers who perform monitoring tasks through the night like engineers in nuclear power stations he's in no doubt about the extent of the problem among American pilots oh I think it's very common I think he's accepted as such it's not really publicly talked about so much but we did a study of looking at in one of our studies looking at 30 pilots over the course of a couple of months we found that it is that he's there to perform heroically when the fallible machine goes wrong like the pilot of this u.s. jet who landed the plane when one undercarriage wheel was stuck due to his fine pilot skills lives and those on board were saved the statistical reality is very different roughly 70 percent of all fatal airline accidents are caused by pilot error like this one in Brazil in 1989 when a very Gare lines plane crashed in the jungle the board pilots had been listening to commentary of an international football match being played in South Paulo dr. more'd believes the most plausible explanation for the fate of the Korean jumper that strayed into Russian airspace and was shot down was the fatigue pilots punched the wrong data into the computer and then simply all dozed off together dr. maureen maintains that for every disaster there are many narrow escapes as a plane gig on long-haul flights is to have a relief crew on board as the Sun sets on speedbird 9 the relief first officer takes over from captain Deacon for the middle portion of the flight as also a relief flight engineer so for this middle passage the original crew of three can all be relieved we had a good rest yes very good thank you good I need it right now on speedbird 9 the relief first officer is a woman Lynn Barton one of 10 women first offices on the 747 fleet there are as yet no woman captains while she monitors the equipment captain deacon is able to go to bed this seven four seven series 200 carries bunks for the crew to sleep in now the plane is over Afghanistan and an electric storm trebles feed three four people nah ball good evening speedbird 9 is estimating officially British Airways encourages women to join us pilots but they're still so few as to indicate prejudice against them from some male pilots as well as from some unexpected quarters very smartly jest executive type of the and she took one look at the pattern and she just turned to him and said to you haven't messed her up there on your own and I should have realized Linn Barton with the relief flight engineer monitors the plane through the night while the passengers and captain Deakins sleep but the night is not necessarily the most dangerous time the worst I find is coming when one's coming eastbound back to the UK you're coming back for the proximities of @midnight British time you've only been in the States 24 hours anyway which is very difficult time to rain to sleep I think most long-haul pilots will say that the door can be care though your eyes are full of grit and you feel very red eyes just looking at the dorms it comes out that's most people's low point speedbird 9 is now of the Burma captain Deacon has risen from his bunk and is back at the controls Bankard speedbird 9 a TMI boundary at three Niner bi-level three seven zero reached mate overhead at five three dragons even I know he put overhead an hour and a half before touchdown at Bangkok it's time for breakfast okay yes that's how it now all right chemicals like that's very important a bloody fight a nice one with bananas whose have another one man Freebird Lana TJ - what cigarette killer two one zero zero four we'll be going down in 150 miles time expecting a radar approach to an ILS Steve gives a briefing for an ILS landing ILS stands for instrument landing system two beams are directed up from the airfield so that the plane can land automatically the autopilot will be disengaged twelve seconds before landing this is normal practice in clear weather provided the pilot or the autopilot heat serves to bars frost right the aircraft is going to it be on the ILS system centerline and glide slope so that the autopilot will be following these to beans till we see the runway quite clearly be in the region or about 400 feet then the autopilot will be taken out and Steve around the edge as the plane descends it rains in the cockpit what's happening here is that during the whole flight the atmosphere in the aircraft is moist from us breathing and the metal work here is got so cold the moisture is frozen on the metal work like frost that's it we had a white film of frost on there you can still see it on here and now that's melted another water is just running off so we all get wet I'm getting soaked here with water dripping off look from the condensation frost no melting in fact the Bangkok airfield Steve is just there now look sit we're considering an autocrat we were my background in fighting than a thousand kilowatt 4:03 usually an albino for beta control now summative ly obviously result when our limits have been if and selecting ILS now bomb blows over Agia trick it's down in a dream as mine stands looking for the glideslope besides gopher it's not your crossbars c'mere thank you my tune there it is now we got by step three we've got nine finals Who am I people diner we do at zero degree five not Kirkland two and one little and steeper hundred about beside land the plane is not being flown manually for the first time since Clapton bankers are coming here the computers have got the plane to Bangkok the human beings have to find the right place to power ground speed third mine clearing right on human right when I record Charlie India that boy film Charlie dear which finger is gay - - we've got to go through into India and it songs gets on the third tier mix left right left yeah and it's left best right next left then right and in the class that tie jump dc-10 you could watch my left wing tip for me catch yeah down the yellow you're fine 8:22 was it the tutu's occupied when I growl and nine could you get that Gator game please leave thought it was 22 right charlie try again I'm Barry - Barry - oh we've got to go all the way back for tango three two one happy right half kaalia they want to sell three sooner right on Charlie we got the tango three two now where's tango 32 anybody know yes it's a similar position but on the middle here well they gave us a long one just a little and I write that India command Plato Roger we've got it not something there are electronic aids to help the pilot path the plant once he's found the right gate as we come into the parking bay dead ahead of me at eye level there's two green lights on below that there's a strip which you can see now is green if we were to go to the right the right side of that would go red if we went to the left the left side to be red but we want to keep it steady green which is what we're doing now when we stop the green lights will go amber and then it will go red when they go red we stop a little bit more right that's time hold it there at the amber stop speedbird 9 has flown the five thousand nine hundred and thirty six miles to Bangkok in 11 hours 40 minutes it's now 8 o'clock in the morning in Bangkok the same plane will fly on to Australia but the pilots will change over here the crew that will take the plane on a half an hour late arriving traffic believe hello John nice to meet you hello Tim time speed just the team here yes yes because it's only an eight and a half hour flight to Sydney there's only the standard three-man crew two pilots and a flight engineer 95 in Russia yeah well we're getting there now anyway got a clean air of things well during the 70 minute turnaround there's a lot to do Saxon rubbish removed from the plane most passengers choose to leave the plane and stay in the airport's transit lounge but some try and stay onboard to rest the dogs and cats going on to Australia are watered it's 80 degrees in the shade the plane takes on 117 tons of fuel cleanup height is 1020 feet and if at any time we get a firewall you just reset the master warning can't think of anything else can you no good okay okay dropped here to start engines are clear to push back and face north Roger not be okay brakes release pushing of one eight one eight thank you see ah push back now okay that's early foreground red level despite the new crew arriving late speedbird 9 leaves only eight minutes behind schedule a takeover crew will fly it for the last leg of the journey to Sydney but the captain deacon and his crew it's time for a rest we tonight Oh the flight crew check into the Dusit Thani one of the best hotels in Bangkok ba flight crews expect to say in luxury hotels like this because they're entitled to hotels with a 24-hour coffee shop where the rooms can be blacked out so they can sleep during the day and where there's a telex and phone at the Dusit Thani ba captains are entitled not just to a room but a suite which they are shown over personally thank you very much indeed me when I got approached one when I did one one when airborne we won 6000 degrees ain't not clear for takeoff immediately sniffing I don't here was a switch-up god takeoff checklist anyone engine stable sudden huh on the Sydney leg captain Richards flies the plane for takeoff day one rotate me too climb zero like on colonics Weaver diner rayon for departure the captain hand flies the plane for ten minutes into the eight and a half hour flight and he engages the autopilot once more after his nap captain deacon meets up with the rest of his crew because of the length of their flight they're entitled to to complete night's rest of the dusit Tommy I think it might look glamorous the glamour side it looks glamorous I don't treat it as a glamorous job now this lifestyle I think it's very nice but I went south to be glamorous and one of the other perks that a pilot is supposed to have it's a fallacy that the stewardesses make a beeline for the captain first-first slipped away from London that's not true at all most of the students today are boyfriend's at home or they're married they've got their own lives they're not doing the job for jumping into bed with captains and crew captain deacons wife Lynne remains at home near Banbury house the journey sir because of his job she was left alone with their three children for much of their childhood she believes she changed his result you get really strong you have to and you have to be able to mend things speedbird 9 is making good progress to Australia and is now in contact with Singapore air traffic control the captain on this leg is one of bas most senior captains captain John Richards he's a man still excited by his job oh look at this airplane for example it weighs something like three hundred and seventy tons in paper he walks around it and seen the colossal size of it absolutely amazing I've been playing for six or seven years that still amazes me how it makes a good air boy it's unbelievable piece of equipment and the range that the distances we fly our incredible London Hong Kong direct 14 our fights with the expansion in air travel there's a worldwide shortage of pilots British Airways has recently launched a massive recruitment drive successful candidates come here to the British Aerospace flying college at Prestwick the school expects to turn out over a hundred qualified first officers a year many cadets come here at 18 having just done a levels in 70 weeks they're qualified to fly as first officers on ba planes and can expect to earn 23,000 pounds a year as a starting salary ba say their selection process is designed to find the Placid stable individual who's not deterred by a life of routine no previous flying experience is necessary the time isn't just spent in the classroom and in the play before graduating cadets have an hour of glory on the stage well because me a dress cooked in - you better know something else it's pretty non-essential and you know the NAPLAN and now that's okay Otto oh no you can't look just really be stiff when you do this Oh effing you gotta give us a hand oh come on esto no that's not very funny though but all going to be airline pilots and airline pilots at some stage in their career have to stand up and talk to their passengers of 747 up to 400 of them first time you do it in your life it's terrifying so we take the terror out of it here by letting them practice here in front of their colleague do a frequency you choose to do you think that's that's much better Oh relaxing or not these two cadets are mimicking so-called girly pilots in the cockpit of a jumbo on autopilot only one in sixteen cadets is a woman despite a policy of equality and selection time to dry this morning I suppose about to pocket in I'll do it here oh there we go Oh smoothly into you oh geez oh these four hundreds there greater but I'll do anything this is the plane they're making fun of recognized by its distinctive wingtips it's the very latest 747 the 400 series in the VA flight simulator at Heathrow pilots are retrained to fly on the new jumbo there's been a revolution in the cockpit gone are the traditional dials you're placed by video screens AG notes you want on the new jumbo the autopilot can be engaged not ten minutes I'm too tear of but approximately 15 seconds after the wheels leave the ground catching on fire finest auto pilot ever built it's simple as that I mean we engage it at 350 feet and it doesn't come out until we've stopped at the end of the wall stopped on the runway after doing a landing it's a very fine autopilot you can cope with crosswinds you can cope with all sorts of things so that's the state-of-the-art what's that's it this instrument basically combines many other instruments on a pension aircraft it's called a primary flying display speed indicator here we've got a height indicator here we've got our attitude here which is the position of the aircraft relative to the horizon we've got a compass down the bottom here on this instrument we actually have a map display the automation is so sophisticated that the data bank on the navigation computer carries the location of every airport in the world suitable for playing this size to land out at the touch of a switch the pilot can call a detailed information about the fuel system he can monitor the exact status of every single door on the aeroplane can even look at the individual temperature and tire pressure of every wheel on the landing gear but there's been a bigger revolution on the 400 the throttles used to be manipulated by the flight engineer but now they move automatically the engineer is no longer needed flight engineer basically it's gone into this and this screen here in the new machine age those who work with machines are likely to be replaced by them the personal point of view I'm very sorry not to be involved with it and I'd love to be involved with the new technology and the new aeroplanes as they come along it would be the first long-haul aircraft oh I've not really been involved with for many many years in my capacity or another but it's not really true that the jobs been taken over by a micro thing maybe most of this has disappeared now into the memory of the computer and this display differently but I think they're going to be missing something by not having a flight engineer dedicated flight engineer ground-handling technical knowledge on the aircraft which is probably deeper than the pilots have somebody who's actually worked on the aircraft with Spanish you know the a320 Airbus has a flight management system even more sophisticated than the latest Jumbo's it has fly-by-wire controls this means that the mechanical links between the pilots controls and the flying services of the aircraft have been replaced by electronic ones the first time in aviation history the plane will simply refuse to do things that its gauges say are dangerous for instance it's impossible for the pilot to stall this aircraft however hard he tries but is that as far as automation can go 10 years ago engineers at NASA in America developed a plane they called hi Matt this fighter displayed more agility than any war plane ever built yet it was unmanned the pilot sat on the ground watching a video display and relaying his controls to the aircraft test was a success yet the project ran into difficulties pilots were not enthusiastic about the program that had a bad impact on the research engineers who would like to be on a program where the pilots who are looked up to think highly of the program itself so it was somewhat negative from that standpoint they would prefer to not have the next airplane test airplane also be unpolluted because that's not the kind of programs that they look forward to culminating their career I would say that was the reason why they were primarily negative because of such opposition the himat unmanned fighter now hangs in a museum in Washington but Duane deeds does not believe it marks the end of automated flight it may be if there's a urgent need to do something like we don't have enough pilots so something drives you to this you might tackle some piece of it like the air cargo piece and say well today's birth control good afternoon speedbird 9 1 3 3 decimal 4 Goffman must leave behind a position that 5:46 as the plane near Sydney it comes within range of Sydney air traffic control nearly 200 people work here instructing all traffic coming into the airport they work in shifts and unlike pilots put in many hours of overtime before appearing on radar planes tracked by the times it crosses various beacons just working all the times I know that he's not estimating this letting long until time zero Niner zero five GMT which is about three hours away and I'll get a very good estimate done about half an hour before the control of the floor hands will give me his actual position as some flight level and his estimate for that button long has dropped help yourself Julie Juliet whitewall three five zero to Cassino I'll see the aircraft coming onto the radar about 30 miles to the west of parks the radar coverages this is a mosaic map he'll start to merge with aircraft coming in from Adelaide and they sort of all track towards this position for Bindra and get messy there so we discuss amongst ourselves what levels they can have and they don't find him off to the arrivals controller when he's on descent into Sydney like silica later not left heading three six zero for downlink participate not about one four zero not for number two it's an extremely stressful job you can have 15 aircraft on frequency and be controlling them and not be particularly busy thousand pounds a year a senior be a captain will earn a basic salary of about fifty thousand pounds with complex flight allowances on top which brings some ba pilots earnings to over eighty thousand pounds a year when you come down to where line pilots basically I think they're overpaid and underworked there's certainly over glamorized if there is such a word this it's I think it's ridiculous and it bitter is not quite that we really worded amused it's ironical to see how the sort of prestige attached to a job which is really systems monitoring how do I justify my salary which isn't a big of our salary before all the training and experience I've now got in flying it is not a vast salary compared with other people's training and qualifications in other walks of life my doctor's like solicitors Bosch barristers who have got two people their career there any more than I am and I'm at the peak of my career that Iranian event but Clarence track director Bankstown Cruz amended Alta to 2009 TFI what would use it now I believe that in the future and soon not in our generation I don't think but pirates will cease to be as such as we were discussing before pretty much the way flight engineers they're all responsible for this airplane and for making sure dive void bumping into the ground and hitting other airplanes so if any doubt at all then I will question the air traffic controllers and instructions that's basically my responsibility the airplanes do not carry radar to locate other aircraft around them they rely on the controllers to ensure the planes do not collide spirit diners out of two eight zero one five zeros this one six there wind and Lake spirit liner Raja left on its final approach the plane passes over Sydney with the Harbour Bridge in the distance captain Richards decides to land the plane manually using the raw data from the instrument landing system at Sydney Airport to help him pilots do this to keep in practice even though here they could land the plane automatically ok run my straight ahead then inside sweep at nine tes left 100 above six degrees of five please four and a half degrees four degrees sorry 100 vertically as the plane lands questions remain about the future its pilots how will man and machine be better integrated as automation increases could it be that pilots will go to sleep after takeoff only to be woken for landing will air traffic controllers fly to claim themselves from the ground or will the conservatism of pilots and public mean that the job will get duller and duller with pilots finally condemned to sit in front of the controls doing nothing after learning whatever happens to air travel the age of the jet jockey is over maybe they dine across from eyes rested in the painting xua left for these other nations sweet banana Raja cross their senators left for the southern end how the brakes the Nana talentos c'mon you okay Franklin okay penny for the engines there welcome to sibling toxa 46 well friends your training down

Channel: Berkaviation videos

Views: 329,957

Rating: 4.8397512 out of 5

Keywords: british airways, boeing 747-200, speedbird, london, aviation, airline 1990, flight, tv series, speedbird 9, bangkok, sydney, atc, air traffic control, ted deacon, captain, co-pilot

Id: o1Qhzl5Xe2w

Length: 42min 51sec (2571 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 17 2016