Breaking Down And Reassembling A Boeing 747 | Engineering Giants | On The Move

[Music] one aircraft transformed the world first permission to carry out a high power ground run with two decks carrying over 500 passengers and wings the width of a football pitch it was twice the size of any airliner before the boeing 747 affectionately known as the jumbo jet okay going up on one and four it's still an engineering marvel it's just awesome the power of these things now as 1747 victor x-ray is stripped to its bare bones and given the biggest overhaul of its life there's a rare opportunity to explore deep inside its hidden features wow this is pretty cramped that is massive a 200 strong team of highly skilled engineers take on the challenge of checking over 20 000 parts of this mighty aircraft if we don't take that out now that crack will just run and run and run [Music] safety is paramount in this finely balanced machine every component from its engines to its kettles must be intricately examined for damage the amount of knowledge and experience we need to learn is just incredible i've got three children they're very proud that mummy works on airplanes well when you see it barreling down the runway as well 140 150 knots do you think i did them boxer and we'll reveal what happens to a jumbo when it reaches the end of its working life [Music] this is engineering giants [Music] i'm rob bell i'm a mechanical engineer and i've always loved to get my hands on complex machines to discover how they work i'm tom wigglesworth an electrical engineer with a passion for big machines and this is victor x-ray the 747 that's about to let us in to all its engineering secrets this is the shortest flight this plane will no doubt ever do it's flying just 132 miles from heathrow to cardiff airport and in a few moments time this is where the 747 will arrive this enormous maintenance [Music] all planes are regularly maintained but every six years 747's come here for a complete overhaul that means that they're stripped right down every part is meticulously checked before being reassembled and sent back out into service [Music] this is the first time that british airways have allowed cameras to film the complete overhaul of one of their aircraft and we'll be there for every critical stage in the engineering process this is a perfect opportunity for me and rob to see deep within the boeing 747 and appreciate how amazing these enormous machines are [Music] so there's your aircraft coming now [Music] victor x-ray was the 1172nd jumbo to be manufactured by boeing [Music] it was delivered to the airline 14 years ago and has since flown 36 million miles equivalent to 1500 times around the world checks please as captain doug brown shuts down the engines and hands the plane over to the cardiff engineering team i've been offered a rare glimpse inside the flight deck hey dog thank you for letting me in here this is a problem what's happy boy's dream isn't it absolutely everybody's dream what is the least used or pressed switch to be honest very few of them get used in flight when the 747 400 was designed in 1989 it moved from being a three-crew airplane with a flight engineers panel there which had thousands of buttons dials and gauges and a full-time flight engineer to an automated two-crew airplane with just two pilots so this is a simplified version this is in some ways yes but what's going on behind the scenes is quite complex the actual heart of the airplane is this flight management computer and what that allows us to do is to program the airplane and the auto pilot of the aircraft with a lot of the information before flight and then as we go through the flight we're actually using the flight management computer to control the aircraft as much as anything else on the airplane in the case of raw flying what's the minimum amount of controls you'd need in the absolute worst case you get you can fly the aircraft using these three basic instruments altifacial horizon airspeed indicator and altimeter i don't know of any case where a 747's got down to flying on those instruments there is a huge amount of redundancy built into the airplane now it's time for the 200 million pounds worth of 747 to be carefully towed into the maintenance hangar where it will live for the next five weeks [Music] i always wondered what it'd be like to be part of the ground crew at heathrow i'm guessing getting a bit of a feel for it now handbrake on good to go now i can finally climb aboard through what is currently the only way in a maintenance hatch in the belly of the plane welcome welcome aboard this flight 319. thank you very much how's your flight excellent thank you there we are first class it's pretty spacious up here very spacious been starting c1a how's the view from up there i'll show you oh that's the stuff absolutely yeah this is 1a reserved for the uh the creme de la creme absolutely which makes this seat what mick jagger's girlfriend i'll do [Music] now that victor x-ray is safely inside the hangar the engineering team can begin the monumental task of stripping the jumbo back to its aluminium shell and forensically examining all of its critical parts for the smallest defect because number one to us is safety safety safety safety we are looking after people's lives here you can't make any mistakes you'll be right all the time you know there's no garages at 36 000 feet over the next five weeks engineers will work in teams within different areas of the plane methodically searching for any signs of damage amongst victor x-rays six million components one day we come into work and we'll be doing the cabin which which is very involved there's all sorts of different disciplines of of engineering that the cabin holds and the next day we could be on the wing next day we could be doing the engine runs at the end of the check which is pretty pretty exciting this complex operation will take over 30 000 working hours with the team having to complete 12 000 separate jobs we pretty much run seven days 24 hours general manager bill kelly is in charge of the maintenance facility how many years would that be flying for well this aircraft could fly um upwards of uh 25 years right so yeah absolutely a very robust very reliable uh strong aircraft and um when well maintained as we do they're they're they they'll go on for many many years yet bill and his team are under massive pressure to finish victor x-ray's overhaul on time on the same day it's due for completion the jumbo is scheduled to fly passengers to south america delays can cost millions of pounds you know you get something wrong in maintenance where it delays you by a day or two days it can really start to impact the rest of your operation so you need to be on the ball you know much of the work on victor x-ray's fuselage needs to be carried out at height the tip of its tail fin is 20 meters above the ground so the aircraft will be surrounded by this rig designed by these engineers specifically to fit a 747 it's not until you get right up close to the tail fin like i'm here now you get a sheer sense of scale for the whole thing the tip to the ground is almost 70 foot and looking back along to the front of the aircraft is a perspective i've never seen before it's seriously impressive [Music] the first big engineering challenge is to test one of the plane's heftiest components the 18-wheeled landing gear locked into the scaffolding rig the plane can't be propped up like a car so its 180 ton weight is supported on three jumbo size jacks as the floor is lowered so i can see clear ground now between the wheels and the floor a failure of the mechanical systems that lower the landing gear could be disastrous so this is the only occasion when engineers have the opportunity to check that the wheels can drop safely if the pilot has to rely on gravity oh geez and here they come the landing gear weighs as much as a double-decker bus so if it was simply allowed to fall down it could potentially cause serious damage just getting the front one done so its mechanisms are designed to offer enough resistance to control the speed of deployment so now they've dropped the guys are just giving them a push to get them finally locked into place when if you're in air and you had to do that the pilot would just kind of swing the plane a bit and get them to swing out and lock and for the back gears there the air pressure that's flowing past it would lock those back into place what are these what are these two plates at the top here well on the nose wheel you've got no brakes so when the aircraft takes off the wheels are spinning uh pretty fast and so those are basically big scaff plates the tires will hit them and it just slows them down and stops them okay okay inside victor x-ray the cabin team are preparing to strip out all the seats melanie getters and janice nash are among a growing number of female engineers working at the facility you say you work for british airways everybody knows the label the brand and they assume that your um cabin crew you know they don't naturally assume that you work in engineering so it's something to be proud of i've got three children they're very proud that mummy works on airplanes and fixes airplanes so that's definitely one to tell the kids brilliant yeah you go go home from work one day and you call your friends saying about getting stuck in the office and then you go and say i've been walking the wing today and they're like wow it's great through rigorous training engineers must learn every facet of the 747. [Music] stan williams first worked on the jumbo 19 years ago and flying on one has never been the same since i'm listening for everything you listen you can't help it i wish i didn't sometimes i'll put headphones on because you don't want to hear there's lots of noises different noises that go on on an aircraft when when it's in flight and uh but you can't help it it's in our blood if you like before everything disappears from the cabin this is the csd's office cabin crew member becky wadsworth has agreed to reveal some aspects of working on a 747 she spent over ten thousand hours in the air on planes like victor x-ray where space is extremely tight these are the ovens these are the ovens on an average flight becky and her team will serve 300 passengers over a ton of food and drinks is it true that when there's two pilots on board they have to have a different meal that's absolutely so you know should there be something wrong with the chicken for example then you don't want them both coming downhill with the same thing and it's those little flash points i mean who decides first it's normally the captain captain first co-pilot guess what's left absolutely i mean the captain will often say you choose first oh what a lovely english tradition a 14-hour flight in cramped conditions is hard work so today's 747 crews are able to use a secret compartment above the passengers heads up the stairs here is the the crew rest area spaces of a premium isn't it up here absolutely koozie oh wow so what's the longest flight you do it's about sort of 14 hours from singapore and in that time then how long would you get to spend enjoying this luxury you'd get about yeah sort of three and a half hours rest i think what you also should have is a little button to call a member of the public up to help back down in the cabin the next test is on a critical safety component that airlines hope their passengers will never see that was impressive failure of the shoots is not an option with lives depending on them they must inflate within seconds and stay inflated so all 12 shoots are sent to the interiors workshop for rigorous testing wow it's huge here specially trained engineers like michael wake ensure that the slides are leak-free and inflate at incredibly high speeds basically they've got to um open up within a certain time limit okay which on this particular unit is three seconds okay so what's the process behind inflating one of these graphs the door open yep and then the cylinder then charges 3px 300 psi and that's that's this here yeah there's a huge technical challenge with the inflation of such a large device to inflate something the size of an aircraft life jacket a small canister can provide enough air but the same system would require a three meter long canister on an escape shoot so instead when triggered the canister of compressed carbon dioxide and nitrogen delivers only an initial boost the clever technique is that these gases are forced through a narrow gap which causes them to accelerate rapidly this acceleration creates a vacuum that then sucks in enough ambient air to inflate the entire slide in three seconds [Music] that was pretty quick yep three seconds we happy with that yeah wow and look at it i mean it's all in there absolutely solid testing the escape shoot is the easy part now like a parachute the 30 square meters of material must be folded precisely back into its container measuring just half a square meter and that typically that'll take how long six hours of hard labor wow it's as much an art as science [Music] it's all too easy to take flying for granted as passengers we're oblivious to the fact that the enormous metal tube we're traveling in is flying through the air at close to 600 miles an hour and at a height similar to everest an atmosphere unable to support life engineer gavin beverstock is showing me how victor x-ray pumps air from its engines into the cabin to create an atmospheric pressure similar to conditions on the ground due to rise in altitude means a decrease in pressure but also due to comfort for passengers it has to be maintained because obviously we're on the ground we're at 14.7 psi and as you're rising through the air it reduces down and once you get below 10 psi you're starting to it's not very comfortable you can start having breathing problems and it is so thin that you out you will struggle but the greater the pressure of air that these pipes pump into the cabin the stronger the fuselage needs to be that would add weight to the aircraft so there's a compromise planes usually fly with the pressure equivalent to between six and eight thousand feet comparable to the world's highest cities that means reduced oxygen and is one of the reasons we often feel tired on a flight pressurizing the cabin can also cause metal fatigue because as air is pumped in and out of the aircraft its fuselage expands and contracts you can see all the dimples along the skin of the plane which when it's pressurized up in the air all gets smoothed out it's a pretty amazing bit of engineering but this frequent flexing of the fuselage can cause cracks it's one of the major reasons why victor x-ray is undergoing this intensive operation in order to thoroughly examine every inch of the airliner's internal shell engineers have to remove almost every fixture and fitting inside the cabin some 747s can take over 500 passengers but airlines can use tracks in the floor to choose their own seating plan on victor x-ray mcgregor and his team must strip out 299 seats mick with the right allen key to just sort of steal yourself a bit of extra leg room in flight with that yeah no it wouldn't hurt unless you've got a hammer and a drift with you as well you'll never get plastic no you wouldn't they are light they're lighter than a settee aren't they yeah there you go done once removed victor x-ray seats are sent to the interior's workshop to be reupholstered and put through their paces by veteran seat tester mark jago so is it your job then to sit in this chair watch a few films play a few games and then say yeah it's a terrible job but somebody's got to do it back in the hangar work continues in the cabin all these side walls are yet to come out all the dados on the bottom 300 floor panels must be removed all the center trough area there gets reworked 180 window protectors and blinds taken out and 140 sidewall panels stripped off [Music] this is the skeleton the plane here this is the um behind here that's the framework aluminium frame yeah it's all aluminium we're now steel steel's too heavy you want your aircraft to be as light as possible than you and that installation is pretty vital isn't it minus 50 degrees outside there uh yes it is i believe it's about minus 56 degrees around 30 to 35 000 feet that's enough to protect you from that minus 50 yard outside it's two days into the overhaul and most of the first class cabin fittings have been removed the team can now begin the painstaking task of searching every inch of the internal frame for the smallest of defects low and behold we found a little crack down in the corner which we're going to put right yeah your favorite seat 1a shift manager paul thomas has discovered a minor crack in one of victor x-ray's floor supports which is right in the corner you can see the tail tail and it runs right to the corner they normally emanate from from fasten a hole so a rivet and then run out or sharp edges you know yeah well you can see you can see the light yeah it's tracking so um yeah we pretty much got to replace that part now and you visually inspect the whole structure absolutely if we don't if we don't take that out now that crack will just run and run and run and run and run so we've found it now so the floorboards will come up we'll de-rivet all this area just for that i mean not just for that small little crack yeah reassuring yeah it is reassuring but yeah because i i mean my car is you know call that a call that a crack i'll show you quick no lay by's at 38 thousand feet i'm afraid there's no lay by's in the sky there are no laners in the sky absolutely it's day four of the overhaul and works beginning on victor x-ray's largest components its wings really from wing tip to wingtip we're looking at about 211 feet so huge wingspan that's about football pitch better football pitch yeah overseeing the work on the aluminium and carbon fiber wings is shift manager chris morgan obviously they're very sturdy but there's quite a bit of movement isn't there in the actual yeah so i mean if you can see this movement there now you you get a total displacement up and down is about 32 feet that's because you don't want a wing to be rigid they need to allow for turbulence and need to allow for airflow how air flows around a wing is crucial to achieving flight and yet incredibly even among experts there are different theories to answer the question how does a plane fly and most people have that question answered with bernoulli's theory a bernoulli's theory suggests that air going over the top of the wing has to travel further than the air underneath because it's got to travel further it speeds up because it speeds up the air particles spread out and diffuse this results in lower pressure above the wing than the pressure beneath that pressure difference literally pushes the plane into the air but this doesn't explain why planes can fly with symmetrical wings in fact it's the angle of the wing and the amount of air it deflects down that matters because according to newton's third law the air force downwards results in an equal and opposite force upwards onto the underside of the wing at the right speed and angle this is enough to lift the plane into the air in flight victor x-ray's wings are subjected to enormous forces apprentice louis robinson-haw has been scouring the surface of this wing to find any damage that may have occurred we found some damage during inspections which the damage is around there where all that is uh pulled away from the structure below it okay so the composite started to come apart defect spotted it can now be repaired it turns out that lewis engineering passion runs in the blood three generations of my family have worked there so it's just run with the family i suppose yeah and are they are they on shift with you sometimes uh no my dad's on the opposite shift to me okay which is okay uh and my bambi is retired now yeah so but he used to work in here as well [Music] lewis's next job is on victor x-rays flaps vital components which increase the surface area of the wings allowing aircraft to fly at slow speeds the only way the crucial hydraulic and backup electrical control systems can be thoroughly checked is to remove the flaps lewis has to control this crane with absolute precision the crane has been set to 0.9 of a tonne which is the exact weight of the flap the it that's so when the last guy undoes the last bolt the wing doesn't drop to the floor or fly to the ceiling is she off okay slowly but surely the flap is removed from the wing with barely a millimeter of movement up or down it's all the arsenal's alright look at his face he's loving it [Music] during flight air passes over these flaps and wings at hundreds of miles an hour that causes friction and the build-up of static electricity to deal with that there are small attachments known as static wicks if you could see it how would that static look coming off here does it just sort of fizzle out literally that visibility wise it's often very hard to see yeah but you will still get sparking really that will occur yes and sometimes in the high in electric storms and and certainly um in a lightning strike we will get these like sacrificial they will take a little bit of a battering on average every aircraft is hit by lightning once a year so how does a plane deal with this phenomenon this laboratory at the university of cardiff holds the answer because this is one of the few places in the world where scientists led by phil leichauer have the technology to make lightning of their own it might sound bad doing these lightning tests through planes and things but absolutely everything on an aircraft has to be certified against all the threats it could be posed to it the state art laboratory tests new materials as aircraft manufacturers look to find lighter more cost-effective alternatives to the aluminium currently used [Music] so why do planes get hit by lightning the airplane seems it's actually in the sky it's a huge metal object it induces the lightning strikes itself because it's the only thing there so how do planes survive to find out we're going to test this aluminium model similar to our own 747. let's uh let's blow it okay you might have the best job in the world sometimes i think so there's a lot of paperwork too though now it's my chance to play god basically when i say fire it's very easy just press fire and fire so as you see the model airplane survived it did look it looks uh perfectly intact everything and everyone inside a plane is protected by the aluminium fuselage which is a good conductor it allows the electricity to take the path of least resistance along the fuselage and out again what would the passenger feel they might hear a loud thump but that's about it they shouldn't feel anything at all a graphic experiment illustrates the dangers of using a non-conducting material in this case plastic fire which is why all new material combinations are so extensively tested back at the hangar work to strip back the 747 continues [Music] today engineers are about to reveal one of the parts of the plane that the public never sees the nose cone or radome as it's known shields the aircraft's weather radar which needs to be checked for corrosion and it works on the radar principle which is like a complicated echo it fires out radio waves in a very very fine focus it fires a beam out and then listens to that beam coming back which will bounce off any clouds or anything that's up ahead and that information is fired at different angles to allow a huge range of sight which is fed back to the flight deck so the pilot can take whatever action he needs to take victor x-ray is now a week into its overhaul and next its most valuable components are about to be removed for closer examination is a big moment indeed they're actually taking the engine off the wing these things cost about eight million pounds each the last thing you want to have happen is it come crashing to the floor as experienced as he is it's a nervous moment for team leader scott crowl i got started as an apprentice 10 years ago and i've worked more up to team leader but i mean even as a team leader now the amount of knowledge and experience we need to learn is just incredible and i think that's what keeps me going generating over 60 000 pounds of thrust an engine exerts enormous pressure on the mounts that hold them in place it's crucial that engineers remove the engines so they can examine these fixtures for signs of wear the pylon is that big bracket if you like you can see which connects the engine to the wing the engine to the pylon itself has got eight bolts eight volts yeah so just four at the front and forward the back and that's what the boys are undoing and doing now they're doing the forward the eight bolts are crucial in holding the engine in place so each one will be sent to a laboratory and tested for weaknesses it is yeah these all get sent away now ndt's but we'll have a new set going back on ndt non-destructively tested nice maybe x-rays yeah yeah ultrasound trending ultrasound yeah for the drop the 7 ton engine is supported in a sling attached to the crane it's an impressive operation to make sure this is all rigged up perfectly well but nothing can go wrong yeah you'll just be pushing it is it i mean it's heavy to push or once now it's suspended it's quite funny we're just supporting it um obviously we we try not to with all the work is done by the crane yeah all right so we let that do okay clear it come down it's all happening okay scott and his team slowly lower the engine making sure that all of its pipes are disconnected to be honest it seems like the tension is being transferred from the crane into the engineers here you can see them all get more and more focused as it slackens off come down again [Music] i don't think even steel toe caps would uh withstand the force of one of these coming down looking pretty good we're almost there yeah it's in that lady and gentlemen is a wrap so the end of the day scott when you go home you've still got that job satisfaction with you oh definitely i mean you know every day i go home i see my little girl and she says daddy how did your day work go today and i say honey today daddy for an engine not just any engine an rb211 ah here we go full-on impression now yeah when turning the big fan at the front sucks in air which is then compressed mixed with a mist of fuel and ignited in a combustion chamber this produces a huge continuous blast of energy in the form of hot gases these are directed out of the back of the engine producing some of the engine's thrust the energy from the combustion is also used to spin the front fan faster sucking more air in this air is directed around the outside of the core and forced out of the rear producing the rest of the engine's thrust the 24 precious titanium fan blades which provide the lion's share of the aircraft's thrust can now be removed and examined by chris thomas and his team for damage is it heavy i mean it's yeah it's not in considerable weight but it's lighter than i thought it would be the titanium blades are hollow to save weight so what exactly are you looking for when you're doing those inspections okay when i inspect the blade i expect the surface of the blade uh leaving the train edge of the blade for any erosion damage okay hey chips or dents yep and corners missing and any uh impact damage you can get on the surface of the blade blades can be damaged by hail or bird strikes all the blades i've got on the blade route here you can see on the market on the blade roof yeah each blade is serialized and they're put in a specific location okay balance the hub so much like on a car wheel say when when you've had something done with your with your car it needs to be balanced so when it's going around at high speed it's not it's exactly the same so if you've had to do some work on one blade you might have to rebalance the whole thing not just that blade that's right yeah wow [Music] fully loaded victor x-ray needs approximately a hundred and twenty thousand horsepower from its four engines to get into the air that's similar to the power of a thousand family cars pulling this plane off the ground it's just in through this hole here just in through that hole this one here that one there and generating that level of thrust is thirsty work wow this this is pretty cramped i'm crawling up into the bowels of the 747 with engineer phil taylor he will spend over two weeks looking for leaks inside the aircraft's labyrinth of fuel tanks so this is it's the main tank we're in the center wing tank which is situated between the two wing sections above you is the cabin area with the cabin seating okay and you're in the forward mid section of the aircraft basically it holds 65 000 liters 65 000 leads certainly and that is that all in this bit here no this is one compartment of six compartments going towards the rear of the aircraft but there's more than one tank on a plane there's uh eight in all so how much fuel are you looking at there across all of it the fuel quantity the whole aircraft is 216 000 liters that is massive i mean your average size cars what uh i don't know 60 liters 60 liters so approximately three and a half thousand cars you could fill with one jumbo full of aviation fuel victor x-ray is now two weeks into its five-week overhaul and so far it's on schedule engineers have completed over 5000 of the 12 000 jobs that need to be done before the 747 can be classified as air worthy again in the cabin the last remaining floor and wall panels need to be stripped along with a toilet module no no i'm i'm good to go mick right okay i've been roped in to help okay stinked me i did tell you that oh now make on there on a lot of old trains i know that anything that was produced just be dumped out onto the track and from that i think they've developed a sort of urban myth that suggests the same happens on planes is that has that ever been true no it ends up in the athletes which is right there in the back of there right four tanks i last met mick removing all the seats and i wondered if working on aircraft for 19 years made him feel more or less comfortable about flying in one i love flying anyway so i mean it doesn't bother me in the slightest i've always loved flying but the wife doesn't like flying at all oh so i mean we'll get on a we go on holiday to lanzarote something like that yeah and we sit there and the flaps will go down and i'm sorry you're gripping your hand that's the flap's going down there should go sure i don't want your name i don't want to know really yeah [Music] in an industry where safety is paramount even a toilet is a highly engineered piece of kit as an electrical component that could cause a fire it has to undergo stringent tests before it's passed fit to fly the tests are carried out at the company's avionics facility outside cardiff here the hundreds of electronic gadgets used on a plane from navigational aids and in-flight entertainment remotes to toilet flushing systems are stripped tested and calibrated by highly skilled engineers like martin jenkins so what happens when you go to the toilet on an airplane right when you actually finish you're what you're doing you press your little button which is on the side of the toilet in the cabin it is there's a there's a massive washing noise that which is what we heard earlier on on the actual rig you get a spray of water from the top and the vacuum gets created in the bowl and sucks section all the way above sixteen thousand feet air pressure outside the plane is considerably lower than inside by opening a small vent the waste pipe and tank are bought to the same low pressure as outside effectively creating a vacuum this means that when a seal on the toilet bowl is opened anything in the bowl is sucked away into the pipes and waste tanks [Music] when you're flying martin when you go to the toilet in the air you must have an ear now for what is the perfect flush that's a good point actually because sometimes you might get an actuator that is actually working but not to the full capacity and as you just said you can pick it up as you're listening to it when the refresh cycle you might not hit it but i probably would yeah and the other guys will work here as well although it might seem over the top this level of testing is not without good reason [Music] on a flight electrical powers at a premium so even the kettles are tested to make sure they don't use too much electricity and take it away from a more important system [Music] engineer simon orcock is currently checking that these kettles draw the correct current while taking the exact time to reach the precise temperature to make a perfect cup of tea we boil it 83 celsius plus uh plus or minus 2 celsius the board of tea tasters of say pg tips or whatever it never says boil a kettle it says hot but not boiling yeah yeah it's amazing even the kettles are over over tested over tested yeah when the 747 flew for the first time over 40 years ago many of these devices being tested here hadn't even been invented as technology has evolved manually controlled cables and pulleys have been replaced by computer-controlled electronic signals transmitted by wires [Music] beneath victor x-ray's passenger compartment is the cargo bay surrounded by the 172 miles of wiring that connect all the planes complex systems just looking around there are miles and miles of wiring here many of these cables flow from the pilot's controls to these vital computers currently being examined by avionics engineer nick jordai the first 747s were designed back in the 60s i presume those wouldn't have had any of this no the racks were built but it had totally different boxes on the boxes were much more primitive than they are now so how would what these boxes do now have been done back then well a lot of the functions done by these boxes used to be done by the flight engineer that rolls redundant because of these guys there's a thought machine taking over man's job it's now just three weeks until victor x-ray is due to fly again as it's been stripped bare i've been able to see how the aircraft's intricate flight controls work delved inside its complex engines and experienced the impressive mass of its landing gear as it was tested but could the plane's computers i've just seen control all of these without a pilot i'm really interested to see if it could actually fly itself i'm heading down to london to see pilot doug brown who flew victor x-ray to cardiff he's going to demonstrate a 747s autopilot in one of the airline's eight million pound flight simulators right i'll just give you a chance to fly the airplane uh manually for a little while as it's as we're climbing away getting away and then what we'll do is we'll put the autopilot in we'll bring it around and we'll do an automatic approach and an auto land onto this runway okay so essentially there are three planes to be thinking about one is pulling back to be able to lift off vertically you've got the steering in the pedals yeah to keep yourself down the runway on that plane yeah but then you've also got this horizontal level as well to keep control what does this control all four of the engines so engines one to four forward thrust on there and you can see the engine spool up oh here we go it's actually down there yeah okay now i'm going to put fuel power on now we're coming up towards the speed i'm going to ask you and pull back oh really rotate so back on the control cord don't turn the stick while you're rotating okay in the middle that's nice bit farther i'm going to select the landing gear up it's amazing this is amazing once up it's a tight 360 degree turn so that we can simulate an automatic landing [Music] can you see the airflow there i can straight ahead yes we're going to let the air the autopilot run through and we'll go right through to nautilus would autopilot be able to do that itself the aircraft will land itself if the pilot has set it up properly to do so fine [Music] the autopilot is now controlling the 747s approach to the runway altering the pitch and direction of the aircraft it can also control the level of thrust [Music] but the autopilot cannot extend the wing flaps which slow the aircraft down or deploy the crucial landing gear no it's going in you see it okay only then can the 747 land itself although the autopilot cannot apply the brakes so now you stick the reverse thrust on we do okay and that a little bit of break that's it fantastic the 747 is a remarkably intelligent machine but it still requires skilled pilots to fly it and it's the high level of training which is one of the reasons why flying statistically remains so safe another reason is that the airline industry has learned valuable lessons in rare accidents through an iconic component housed in the tail section of a plane here they are two black boxes this on the right the data recorder records with the telemetry of the flight and on the left is the voice recorder which records all the pilots voices the two black boxers are regularly tested at ba's avionics lab where i met up with engineer john davis this is a black box but as you can see it's not actually black it's painted orange and that's because it's clearly identified in any incident it's a big old tape recorder it is a big tape recorder that's what basically it is as you can see as well the tape is actually surrounded by a two thermal packs which are chalk spring loaders spring loaded as well yeah uh with two thermo packs which are chalk impregnated with water so in the event of a fire that water turns to steam keeps then that tape at a steam temperature okay so it won't destroy the tape and what sort of temperature range is it specified to it should well it should withstand 1000 degrees c over a 30 minute period of time that's where aviation feel burns so the bit you're opening now inside there that is the the precious cargo of this is the part they're interested in they'll record the last 30 minutes of any flight it may look archaic and new airliners have converted to digital solid-state data storage but tape still does the trick that could contain the most precious of information that will ultimately be fed back to to make sure it never happens again exactly yes which it has many times yeah to comply with comprehensive safety legislation all aircraft must work to strict maintenance schedules including detailed tests every year and a complete overhaul every six years at 14 years of age victor x-ray could still have another 10 years of flying ahead of it but there comes a time when a 747 is just too costly to keep maintaining then it's worth more as spare parts than a complete aircraft this is part of your flaps part of the kruger flaps mark gregory is the boss of air salvage international with a lot obviously the largest dismantling company in the uk in fact in europe at cotswold airport in gloucestershire mark and his team salvage over 40 aircraft a year these here can we have a closer look at these can yeah they are 747 uh inboard landing gears removed from a 747 400. if it's done huge amount of landings then the value of that is kind of dropping but i think this has done quite a lot of landings but it's still you know still not cheap roughly how much then you're probably looking at about 300 thousand dollars for a set of landing gears like this on a 747 mark will salvage up to 1200 parts which will eventually be sold to airlines around the world precision electronics means a second hand coffee maker could fetch up to 3 000 pounds even a simple bowl for the toilet could sell for as much as 500 pounds these are the front screens off the 747 they've got very high value and i would say probably around about 30 000 well each for each screen yeah because these ones here are obviously they're heated the heated elements running through them i think they're gold heating elements that go through them well okay so in here now you've got so there's they're very very thick they're they're really thick um screens they're very they're laminated as well you can just see the elements see the elements in there at the top um a bit like your car heated front screen as well that hits home yeah the the the value of the whole industry you know yeah it's it's massive actually massive eighty percent of the salvage value of an aircraft comes from its engines there's a 737 engine this has probably got a resale value of about 1.2 million i suppose wow and going back the bigger engines at the back there a little bit more once all the valuable parts of the 747 have been removed what's left of the aluminium shell will be tackled and after almost three weeks victor x-ray is now at a similar stage of its overhaul 18 days ago this plane was flying passengers around the world and today what it looks like inside is a far cry from what it would have been then in this skeletal state there are signs of the 747s evolution we're right at the very front of the aircraft here and above us is the flight deck and just looking around even in a plane as modern as a 747 it's surprising to see how much mechanical equipment there is as well as obviously all the electronics victor x-ray still uses the jumbo's original cable and pulley system to control some of the aircraft's most important functions including the landing gear doors and the rudder and then finally right at the back here hopefully yep you see the cables heading off through the cabin and off to the rudder keeping it mechanical keeping it simple ah the flight deck looks a lot different now without the seats and all the flight instruments the cardiff team now have a tight deadline to turn victor x-ray back into a fully working plane it's booked to go back into service in just over two weeks on the same day the complex process is due to finish [Music] but when a 747 has come to the end of its working life like this one at cotswold airport there's no turning back for mark gregory and his salvage team we've removed over 130 tons of equipment and all the left wooden is now now 100 tons of aircraft which has got very little value because the only value there is the metal at this point the final part of the demolition process can begin so we'll start we'll take the tail off first chew the towel and then we'll work forward and the outboard of the wings into the fuselage and then through the rest of the body then it doesn't take very long it's about three days to do a 747. it really is all the guts and the veins and everything just being pulled out of the whole machine look at that very soon this 747 is nothing more than a heap of scrap metal so this is 200 million pounds worth of plane reduced to probably the most expensive pile of scrap i've ever seen in my life only a few recognizable fragments of the aircraft remain so this is a leading edge and this is um that's aluminium there you go don't you see it here yeah it's thin but pretty well i mean it takes some battery though doesn't it yeah that's pretty durable then as the wing moves back it doesn't need to be as um doesn't need to be as strong so they make it out of this lightweight stuff engineering being led by nature isn't it honeycomb look at this thing you can i mean you can see the thickness that's so thin it's like that [Music] some 747 flight decks are spared demolition to be used as the shell in the construction of flight simulators wow oh yeah this is a bit different it's like a relic isn't it look at that this is proper kind of aviation history how it all used to be all these controls here is where flight engineer would have sat when you needed one obviously on victor x-ray that's that's gone the remaining carcass of a 747 like this still has a recycling value worth up to 35 000 pounds [Music] and although it's no longer pure enough to be used again in aircraft construction has recycled aluminium it does get to live another day once i've separated out the aluminium it'll be sent away smelted down and recycled meaning what was once a fuselage of a 747 could be your next fizzy drink or even the frame of a bicycle [Music] we're on our way back to cardiff where victor x-ray should now have been given a new lease of life last time last time indeed it's heading out tomorrow evening it's due to head back into service there it is victor x-ray completely different it's all back in [Music] it does smell new it does smell new last time i was here this was all completely open yeah it's all on again the screens are running good since arriving five weeks ago engineers have replaced over 5000 separate parts including 11 brand new toilets 386 square meters of new carpet has been fitted along with 285 refurbished seats and there are 14 brand new first class seats for passengers paying upwards of 5000 pounds of flight for the luxury wow oh wow hey oh it's mad to think it does all this and it flies in just over 24 hours time these seats should be occupied by paying customers on route to south america so now for the first time in five weeks victor x-ray is towed from a hangar for the final critical tests that need to be carried out to ensure all the parts of the aircraft including its four engines are working [Music] for hugh gibbs this is the only occasion when an engineer gets to power up a 747 for real so will we be moving anywhere when you put it up to almost maximum thrust no no we've got the brakes on and uh we can't do more than uh one engine at full power at a time we have to do them one at a time really so if you have all four you would be taking off well taken off through the middle of cardiff airport yeah request permission to carry out the high power ground run [Music] okay going up on one and four the sensation of being here right now is kind of what you get when you hit turbulence mid-flight but yet we're here on the runway sat outside cardiff airport it's just awesome the power of these things that was a brilliant fun experience for me but from a technical perspective how did it go all went well we had no problems at all uh got the high power it was lovely and smooth and it passed all the tests that we needed to do so and does running those engines up to throttle like that get any less exciting any time no i've been doing it for about five years now i still love it [Music] the following day and on time victor x-ray is ready to bid farewell to cardiff for the engineers this is the moment when all the hard work pays off quite rewarding you know uh job ownership you know especially if you've been on it from start to finish and you think you look back i've done that works and uh well when you see it barreling down the the runway as well 140 150 knots do you think i did them butter you know i've been in the industry of 20 years and you'll never lose that pride and that feeling inside that you know you've been part of producing that product and keeping it safe and obviously knowing that when the aircraft returns to heathrow the customer is then sitting on that aircraft and you know you've done your job well after five weeks over thirty thousand working hours and twelve thousand separate jobs victor x-ray is ready once again to take to the skies [Music] and for the engineering team who have painstakingly stripped the aircraft down and built it back up again there's the satisfaction of knowing it works [Music] [Applause] [Applause] you

Channel: On The Move

Views: 398,651

Keywords: on the move, cars, planes, trains, documentary, documentaries, full length documentaries, engineering giants, mechanics, strip down, hidden secrets, boeing 747, full documentary, hd documentary, engineering documentary, bbc documentary, aircraft industry, boeing 747 breakdown, passenger aircraft, heavy maintenance, exceptional engineering

Id: lp7oFLjq0-Q

Length: 58min 35sec (3515 seconds)

Published: Fri May 28 2021