Airplane noises explained by airline pilot (Full flight) - Ask A Pilot

hi guys welcome back to the channel and this video is about noises on board airplanes where is it coming from and is it something that you should be afraid of two fronts so we start our little movie with the cabin crew doing their safety demonstration in the background and the airplane is being towed by a pushback truck so the first thing we're going to listen to in this video is what it sounds like when a jet engine is being started up so i would like you to listen for a deep tone in case of a sudden loss of cabin pressure oxygen masks will appear automatically from above pull the mask toward you there you go that deep tone just indicates that the engine is being started up and now perhaps something interesting you can start seeing that the airplane starts moving backwards and i can tell you that most airplanes don't have a gear a reverse gear so this is something that the pushback truck is helping us with and the whole idea with the pushback team is that they will observe for hazards around the airplane they will communicate to the pilots if they see anything out of the extraordinary and they're just there to help that everything is looking clear and fine when the pilot starts up the engines so while we're starting up the engines here there's a lot of systems that will be powering up in the background and one of them is the hydraulic system and you will be able to hear the hydraulics powering up in just a few seconds oxygen masks will appear automatically from above you in such case remove your face mask and place the yellow oxygen mask over your nose and valve so those sharp the consecutive tones that was just the hydraulic pressure just building up so now you can hear a second deep tone and that's just indicating that the second engine is being started on now unlike in a car the starting of the engine just takes a little bit longer so it usually takes maybe about 45 to 60 seconds to start up an engine now really depends on the airplane type and i some airplanes can also start up two engines at the same time but the normal thing is that pilots will start up one engine at a time so what we will see here in a few seconds as well is that the pilots are configuring the airplane for takeoff already and what they will be doing in just a few seconds is that they will start lowering the flaps so the flaps you can see at the back end of the wing and they will just increase the wing area helping the airplane to generate lift so now if you look towards the back end of the wing you will be able to see that the flaps are being extended and also in a few seconds you will see the pushback truck that has helped the airplane being put into the taxi position so that is going to be visible near the wingtip now so that's the pushback vehicle what it looks like so at this stage the pilot is asking for tax clearance and once it has been received they will start moving forward so there you go of course you can't hear the pilots being given the tax clearance but that is what's happening now so this video was shot out of heathrow and with heathrow being a major airport in london and we will spend a little bit time together on the ground before we get to the runway it just gives me an opportunity to maybe talk about some some other things before we get to the takeoff phase so you might have experienced that you get on board the doors are closed and then you just wait and wait and wait and the reason sometimes is that the pilots are told to wait with the engine start because of course once they have started the engines the engine starts burning fuel and fuel of course is cost money and it's bad for the environment so if the air traffic control control can see that there's a bit of a queue they will tell the pilots to just wait a little bit so they can more or less just taxi in one go towards the runway instead of waiting with the engines um running so on the way out to the runway the pilots will perform several checks one of them is a control check you will be able to see a control check on top of the wing now it's just some panels being moved up and down so that's what a control check looks like another interesting information perhaps is that when the engines are started up and the pilots put the engine generator online you may sometimes just see a little bit of a flickering of the fastened seatbelt signs and sometimes the public announcement system is being interrupted and all that is is just a power transfer so you could see there was another flight control check and something interesting here as we do the turn try and see if you can spot the concorde so there you go at the wingtip the concord so with heathrow being one of the major bases for or if not the major baseball ba you will see a lot of ba airplanes here and the big building you can see here is an airplane hangar so that's where they do service on the airplanes and you can also here see one of the newest airplanes from airbus the airbus 350. another thing i just want to make you aware of is that we're just approaching a training area here for the firemen and you would actually be able to see one of the uh aircraft that they do training on firefighting training so that's the green airplane you can see in the background here and sometimes if there is a training going on then you would actually be able to see fire and flames from airplanes looking like this so it's nothing to do with a an airplane that has had an accident this is just a training platform for the firemen so when the pilot is approaching the runway they will give a command to the cab crew just advising them to be ready for takeoff [Music] so this is what that sounds like and that's just an indication to the cabin crew that they are the pilots are approaching the runway and that the takeoff will happen briefly so at this stage the pilots are just doing a final check of all the instruments before the enter the runway and what we're going to do here as well is that they will do a brief engine check before they actually advance the engines to takeoff power so an engine check is where the pilots advance the power to let's say 40 percent and then they will just check that everything sounds and looks normal before they advance the power so this is what we're going to hear in a sec when the pilots get the clearance for takeoff [Music] now you can hear the engines are spooling up this is the controlled engine check and there you go now full check of power set and you can see that the airplane is accelerating down the roadway now the runway is about 45 to 60 meters wide and during the takeoff run the pilots will of course stay on the center of the runway and just making some small control inputs to stay in the center when the airplane has reached a certain speed they will start what's called a rotation that's what you can see now and very soon after getting airborne the pilots will select the gear now on some airplane types you will be actually able to hear when the gear goes up in the wheelbay it sounds like a little bit of a bump and sometimes you can actually also feel that the wheel i saw going up in the wheelbay and on this particular day there was a little bit of crosswind so you can actually see if you look out towards the tip of the wing that the pilots are making some minor adjustments for the crosswind next thing we're going to see is the flaps being retracted and the pilot is being given a turn towards the well the right direction because what happened this day was that we started um in the opposite direction of the destination which is quite normal sometimes you will always start in the in a headwind so if you start off in the wrong direction then the pilots will of course be looking at going in a direct line as soon as possible there we just saw the flaps being retracted and it's quite normal when you approach a little cloud layer that the there will be some very very light turbulence and you can see in just a few seconds that the the wing is just jumping a little bit up and down that is just due to going through a little bit of a layer where there's a few clouds that's completely normal now the part have been given another turn and very soon we're going to see the airplane going into clouds there you go just entering some clouds and sometimes when you go through clouds it's it's normal to just pick up a little bit of of light turbulence actually something cool to see here you can actually see in the clouds that the airplane is being reflected and there you go already out of the clouds a little interesting thing now if you look at the wing the wing has changed a little bit in color and that's just due to the temperatures when it was passing through the clouds so of course during this stage everybody is sat down the fasting seatbelt sign is on but when the pilots are assessing that it's safe to do so they will start releasing the cabin crew so the cabin crew can start their service and the reason why they don't just release everybody at one go is because normally when we check off the seat bar signs people start queueing for the toilet and that just makes it a little bit more difficult for the cabin crew to start their service so we normally as pilots we just give the cabin crew just a chance to get ready for the service before we let go of the seatbelt signs for the rest of you so the way we normally would communicate to the cap that it's clear or the cabin crew that it's clear to start the service is that we will just very quickly flicker the seatbelt signs to go off and then back on again so that would be like a double ding you will hear in a few seconds so that signal that was just the pilot sickness with the cat crew that it's safe to do their service so the next thing i would like to show you or just demonstrate is when the airplane goes up to its cruising altitude the pilots will reduce the engines a little bit and that may sound like the engines have suddenly stopped and they haven't stopped i can assure you but it's just the transition from a climb to the crew's face it can make it sound like the engines have certainly stopped i just wanted to make sure that you hear that what it sounds like [Music] so we made a little bit of a fast forward uh at this stage you can hear in the background that the cabin crew are doing the uh announcements and this is just the stage where the cabin crew will be preparing the cabin for landing so just as you saw them for takeoff where they will be going through the cabin checking various things they will be doing a check before landing that everything is as it should be now pilots would typically start the descent or leaving the cruising altitude about 30 minutes to landing so just as i did for the takeoff i thought it would be useful to just make a few comments on what's happening during the landing stage so now we jumped a little bit forward again you can see the airplane is now closer to the ground and one of the first things you're going to see during this clip here is that the pilots are just making a turn which will align the aircraft with the runway now maybe something quite useful to know is that both pilots are fully capable of landing the airplane so should something happen to one of the pilots the other pilot can take over and safely land the aircraft but here we will see in a few seconds that the pilots are making a correction to align the aircraft with the runway so the next stage we're going to see being performed is that the pilots will start configuring the aircraft for landing so that involves extending the flaps then usually the next thing that will happen is to extend the gear and then we will go through various stages of flaps before the airplane is fully configured for landing but here you see the flaps slowly being extended from the back of the wing and the next thing that you're going to hear if you listen very careful is just the gear being extended so that little bump there that was just the gear being lowered and because now the gear is fully extended there will also naturally be a lot more wind noise around the airplane and that is something that you can hear actually on most types of plane the next thing that will happen is that the pilots will select another stage of flaps their connect should also hear the motor that drives the flaps and just in a few seconds we're going to see the pilot selecting the landing stage of flaps now one thing that i would like to just explain is that there could be various reasons why the pilots are considering it's safer to start a climb again than to land one of the things could be traffic it could be weather related or it could also be technical related but the maneuver that the pilots are going to perform if if it's safer to not to land is what's called a go around so during the go around what the pilots are doing is that they're configuring the airplane for a climb instead of a landing now that involves switching a lot of different things and the pilots will not have as a priority to talk to the cabin so that's why the cabin crew in the case of a go around will make an announcement on behalf of the pilots and when we have a suitable time and everything is again configured for climb we may have time to just give a brief announcement saying well we will be coming around for another landing or we will be landing at somewhere else but while the whole maneuver from a passenger point of view view might be a little bit stressful i can assure you that it's a controlled maneuver and the pilots are looking after your safety so now we can see that the airplane is getting closer towards the ground and when the airplane touches down you might hear a little bump but you will also see some panels on top of the wing being extended and those panels on the top of the wing is called spoilers you may also hear that the engines are being used to do what's called air reverse there you have the spoilers coming up the engines have been put into reverse that means they blow a little bit of air forward instead of pushing air backwards so when the airplane reaches a safe taxi speed what happens normally is the captain crew just starts welcoming you to the destination and at the same time when the airplane is leaving the runway the pilots will take the spoilers down and they will start retracting the flaps so just as for uh when we saw the airplane taxing out of heathrow again at big airports that could be quite a long time for uh taxing and it's quite a normal procedure that if there is a long taxi distance that the pilots will actually shut down one of the engines so the airplane is only taxing on one engine so it depends a little bit from uh operator to operator but some operators will allow you at this stage to actually turn on your mobile phones you for your understanding so if you listen very carefully here in a few seconds what the pilots are going to do is they're actually going to shut down one engine and if you listen very carefully you might be able to just hear what that sounds like so that little change of noise there that was just the pilots shutting down an engine so we will fast forward a little bit again to a point just shortly before arriving at the gate so this is something that pilots normally communicate to the cabin crew that was shortly at the gate that was just the pilots saying that was soon at the gate and then you will hear the cap manager making a command to the crew and the next thing that's going to happen here is that the pilot's going to set the parking brake and they're going to shut down the remaining engine and then you will hear the seat belt signs going off and a command from the cabin crew again that it's safe to open the doors so there you go engines are being shut down seat belt signs and that's the cabin crew command and what you hear now in the background is just a hydraulic system powering down uh very soon you will be start seeing uh various ground vehicles approaching the aircraft and they are just assisting the aircraft with offloading the bags in the cargo hold and if the airplane is due to fly again there's a whole procedure as well that reconfigures the aircraft for another flight of course at this stage as well that the majority of passengers will probably be queueing in the center aisles getting the bags out and everything but normally there's there's really no rush to get out and stand in the middle you can just remain seated until it's clear to get out so guys that was it i hope you enjoyed it if you have any questions or comments remember that you can always send us a message i really hope that you like the video so remember to hit the like button and subscribe if you want to see more videos from us until next time bye

Channel: Ask A Pilot

Views: 76,422

Keywords: askpilot, askapilot, pilotvscabincrew, askthepilot

Id: 6V5vw8Di-hM

Length: 24min 16sec (1456 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 03 2020