Flying The B-52 Stratofortress & Denver International Airport | Behind The Wings [4K] | Spark

i'm matthew burchette and this is behind the wings and this episode is on america's iconic b-52 bomber baby [Music] now i say this a lot but how cool is this [Music] you guys are getting a really inside look at this thing not everyone gets to do that [Music] bam bam bam bam bam bam bam welcome to behind the wings my name is matthew burchette i'm the curator at wings over the rockies air and space museum in wonderful denver colorado and get ready to learn about some of the most iconic aircraft ever learn about some really cool aviation history and generally come away with just an amazing appreciation for aerospace in general you're not going to want to miss this [Music] the b-52 strata fortress came to life in 1945 when the united states army air forces needed to expand its bomber capabilities in 1955 the first stratofortresses were delivered to the 93rd bomb wing at castle air force base in california as america's big stick of diplomacy the nuclear-capable b-52 was the nation's main soviet deterrent during the cold war designed to fly deep into soviet territory to strike cities and industry with nuclear weapons b-52s were on constant airborne alert from 1960 to 1968. luckily the big bomber never dropped a nuclear weapon in combat but it certainly saw extensive action during the vietnam war with the lessons learned in vietnam america began to look for a replacement for the aging b-52 while the xb70 valkyrie and f-111 aardvark were slated to fill the role of the stratofortress neither aircraft lived up to their hype and the b-52 soldiered on even with the debut of the b-1 lancer the b-52 remained a part of america's nuclear triad with continuous upgrades the last b-52s manufactured in 1965 are still serving our country and are planned to serve until at least 2045. all right that's enough chit chat let's go explore the second oldest b-52 strata fortress anywhere hey welcome to this episode of behind the wings which we're highlighting the b-52 bomber here at wings over the rockies air and space museum if you've ever been to our museum you certainly can't miss this monstrosity out front but what you may not know are some of the salient features of this aircraft take for example the wingspan that's 185 feet wide now for comparison's sake that's nearly two b-17 bombers from world war ii how nuts is that but even more nuts the length she's 115 feet long which is nine feet longer than our b1a lancer that we have inside but guess what speaking of inside we got places to go baby [Music] we decided to start at the end and work our way forward so we are actually in the gunners position of a b-52b and i will say this there's a distinct smell about old planes and i know there's some guys out there that know what i'm talking about i i can't place it but it's kind of funky the b-52b was equipped with a quad 50 caliber machine gun turret just like this one but it had a radar gun sight now as the b-52 got older and more complex they went to a 20-millimeter cannon and finally to a 20-millimeter gatling gun and there was nobody that actually sat back here at all and now they don't even have a gunner station did you know that the b-52 bomber is the largest airplane to have an aerial kill it's true 24 december 1972 the crew of diamond lille encountered a mig-21 fighter over north vietnam and the rear gunner shot it down with its 450 caliber machine guns just like we have here now you'll notice that this is not a large compartment and you may or may not notice there's no ejection seat so how did this guy get out well guess what there is a handle right here but it's not for an ejection seat it just makes the entire end of the turret fall away from the plane which means that the guy just had to dive right out uh-uh not going to happen now as much as i like being back here because there is so much to look at there's even more to look at up front so let's make our way to the cockpit section because we got a lot to talk about there as i crawl through our b-52 there are some things you need to know about this aircraft like the fact that our b-52 is 64 years old there's a saying in the b-52 community that goes this is your grandfather's b-52 which means it's possible that pilots today are flying the exact same plane their fathers flew that's nuts no other aircraft in the u.s arsenal has that kind of legacy okay we've made it to the navigator's position yay no more crawling we're actually back here in what they call the black hole you can kind of see why not a lot of ways to look out of these tiny little windows there's one here and one over to my right but this is where the radar navigator sat and just to my right was where the navigator sat now that sounds redundant but in 1950s parlance the radar navigator was actually the bombardier and if you look at some of this equipment around me you start seeing special weapons in asm lock and internal bomb indicator light control you know all that kind of cool stuff but right in front of me is actually the large radar screen that the bombardier would use to figure out where the target was and when exactly to drop in this case usually a nuclear weapon luckily the b-52 never dropped a nuclear weapon in combat now if you want to stay safe in a super scary environment you definitely need a good ewo he lived above us let's go see what he did so we're up on the flight deck now we've gone up a level from where we were before and we're in the ewo station and if you remember correctly ewo stands for electronic warfare officer now when the b-52 was created was really meant to go straight into the soviet union and bomb cities and large factories and that kind of thing well the soviets knew we were probably going to come and they had an amazing anti-aircraft system set up with aaa batteries which is anti-aircraft artillery and sams and that was the big threat the surface-to-air missile they had the sa2 which was an amazing piece of equipment it didn't do great for us but it was great for the soviets so the ewo was there to counter that threat one of the things that he had as his disposal was the alq-117 and it was a suite of electronics that could literally prioritize all the threats coming at this plane in fact the ewos like to say that it worked auto magically which is kind of cool when you think about it but it was a deadly game that they were playing because the soviets were launching missiles from the ground and from their aircraft to try to take down these bombers and the ewo was trying to jam their radars throw off their heat-seeking missiles and generally keep themselves alive and get back home but how would you get back home let's move up front and let's see where the pilot and co-pilot were [Music] to my left is where the pilot would sit and i'm sitting where the co-pilot would sit now one of the things you're probably looking at already is there a lot of bells and whistles in here you got to remember the b-52 had eight engines which means eight throttle levers and all of these gauges for the corresponding engines you've got fuel flow you've got rpm exhaust temperature pressure ratio all these kind of stuff that you know you don't have to look at a lot but you definitely got to keep your eye on the stuff you really need to keep your eye on luckily like any other plane is always right in front of you it's the six pack it's your turn and bank indicator it's your altitude it's your air speed all that important stuff that you really need to know to fly now one of the other things you're probably noticing is some of this stuff looks kind of beat up well there's a reason for that in 1998 a gentleman came by before lowry was really well populated he climbed up on a ladder and he doused the cockpit section with gasoline and he lit this plane on fire now why did he do that well he was protesting america's land mine policy now what does the land mines have to do with b-52s i got no clue but in his mind it made perfect sense luckily he was caught and this plane had some damage to it to the tune of about 250 000 but luckily our volunteer corps came to the rescue and was able to repair this plane otherwise sadly she probably would have gone to the scrap heap not a really fitting end for such an amazing plane so as i sit here i'm struck by how much of the original equipment is still in here all the gauges and dials and it gets me to thinking what's the difference between a 64 year old b-52 and a b-52 that well is maybe 60 years old but is still flying for the air force i know there have got to be changes you know technological advances and whatnot but luckily there is an air force base not too far from here that still flies b-52 so i'm thinking why not my knot [Music] [Music] okay so you can tell we are no longer in colorado we're in minot north dakota everything you've ever heard about it is true it's cold out here and i've only been here a couple of hours but minot is also home to the 23rd and 69th bomb squadrons that fly the b-52 like the ones we have up front except mucho modernized and we are going to see some of that stuff up close and personal but right now we're going to go talk to the base historian because i'm freezing so let's go did you know that minot air force base is one of two b-52 bases in the united states and also one of the areas where we store some of our nuclear munitions in fact if this base were to secede from the united states it would be the third largest nuclear power in the world minot air force base is also home to over 5 000 military personnel who have access to their own grocery store neighborhoods and even a fitness facility now it's time to meet up with the historian rob michael to understand how b-52s and the fifth bomb wing found their home in minot north dakota so give me a little bit of background on the fifth bomb wing how did it get here what did it do before it got here so the the fifth is a really old unit started out in 1919 at luke field in hawaii if you ever look at an overhead image of battleship row right that's ford's island and that was actually luke field so the fifth is kind of famous because they bombed a volcano they did moanaloa give us a brief overview of what the heck that was all about that's an interesting story and it's debatable on whether or not it worked so the volcano was erupting and the bomb group happened to be there right at luke field so a scientist came up with the idea to actually bomb the lava tubes to save the city of hilo from the volcano the 23rd and 72nd got in their keystone bombers keystone the keystones and decided to uh drop some bombs on the flow that sounds like something right out of an episode of gilligan's island it's just kind of goofy now that we've got the fifth bomb whim established when did it come to minot and and why minot well the shortest path to russia or the soviet union is over the pole right so all these northern tier bases that were being built were kind of usurped by sack right and taken over okay you know when sac said hey let's put some bombers up there how does the air force come around and just grab the land is it is it literally a land grab and just say hey we're the air force and we get to do what we do or is there a process so the citizens of minot decide heard that the air force was shopping north dakota to put in an air force installation so the residents and the local business owners said hey this is going to be a great thing for the city right it's going to bring us a lot of money those local businesses and the citizens donated 50 000 in the late 50s no to buy the land where my air force base sits i just don't see that happening today i don't even that's amazing all right so i'm standing here in dock 8 which in air force parlance means well hanger and this guy is captain arpin now you're actually a b-52 pilot that's correct that is very cool before we get to that tell us about where we're standing so duck 8 as you said a hanger is one of our more recently built hangers and as you can see behind us we do have one b-52 currently in the hangar there's actually room for an entire another b-52 in this hangar so that maintenance operations can continue even when the weather is bad outside that is nuts and considering minot north dakota in the winter you don't really want to be doing that stuff outside so tell me a little bit about yourself how long have you been flying the b-52 uh five years in the b-52 now closer to six but uh five years here up in minot how do you like it uh it's a lot of fun i'll tell you what the b-52 requires a lot of actual flying as opposed to a lot of newer air frames oh that's nice well what i'd like to do is just kind of do a walk around and and kind of talk about some of the salient features of this plane are you cool with that yeah absolutely all right let's go see we're standing here in front of the monster engines on the b-52 captain arpan tell us about these things all right so we're standing in front of engines number one and two of the b-52 which iconically has eight of these tf-33 turbofan engines now we've been seeing these guys take off all day long and they're super smoky what's going on with that generally because these are a slightly lower efficiency engine that you're than you're used to seeing today and what you're seeing is actually a little bit of the imperfect burn coming out of the back of the engine we can carry up to 290 000 pounds of gas as a full fuel load so just in comparison my super awesome subaru crosstrek holds a whopping 16 gallons that's a whole lot of subarus in that plane right there and you guys refuel in the air all the time yeah no big deal very typically on most training stories and uh definitely on any sortie that we're taking out any further than outside of the continental u.s that's awesome well let's keep walking around because there's way more that we want to talk about we're in the bombay right now and this thing this looks really super scary what is this so we're looking at here is called the conventional rotary launcher it's actually one of the newer features that we have and it allows us to drop jdam and other precision guided munitions where we actually have the capability to talk to the weapons from the bomb bay whereas what we used to do is only release our gravity weapons so really no no inertial guidance no any kind of guidance out of the bomb bay so this gives us the capability now to launch smart weapons out of the bomb bay and allows us to really increase the overall amount of smart weapons so all these plugs literally get plugged into the the weapon and then the weapon and the plane talk to one another that's correct so all these there's a plug at every single one of the eight stations which can carry up to a 2 000 pound smart weapon so each one of these plugs actually allows the weapon to talk to the aircraft and allows us to program into that weapon in flight where we want it to go taking a tour around this aircraft got me to thinking how much of the aircraft is original well everything you're looking at on the outside is actually from the 1960s yeah the tech on the inside has been replaced but considering there's no boeing store you can go to and say hey i need a new front landing gear maintaining this old girl for over 50 years is impressive oh big difference though the tail so one of the things i really wanted to point out was this guy the tail ours is a b52b which means it's got quad 50s in the back this has got nothing what you definitely notice here is absolutely correct they've removed the gunner position and it really uh kind of came about when we realized that there's really not much more a gunner could really do for us in the way of defense with long-range missiles and stuff like that to defend against yeah a gunner really isn't going to take care of that i am loving this i could spend all day checking this out but i really want to see the inside can we go to that well as you can see behind me matt we've got a little bit of active maintenance going on so we can't check it out right now but we can come back later and when we do i'm gonna bring out a full b-52 crew and they can show you around the crew compartments and talk to you a little bit about what they do in the air seriously okay i can probably wait for that maybe waiting for the b-52 crew to get ready i headed out to the flight line to watch some b-52s take off man to actually see these guys fly was amazing big yes a bit smokey yeah but what do you expect from a plane that your grandfather could have flown in back inside dock 8 it was time to meet up with arpin's crew and get a tour of the inside of the plane [Music] up first we joined captain henry in the cockpit this really doesn't look that much different than the aircraft that we have at the museum no and it wouldn't um she's she's got some new tricks um but she has not changed a lot as far as just the the aesthetics internal to the jet so um we have our you know our adis altimeters vvi things you would expect to see in a you know your normal aircrafts um but as far as systems are concerned some of your systems that keep the the jet operating we have our hydraulics off to the left hand side there and then you've got your instrumentation right here for what's going on with the engines um you've got oil pressure up across the eyebrow panel here we've got electric software right hand side here as well so kind of some some big picture systems it does look so similar to what we have and our and ours is literally the second oldest yep it really does look uh look the same but uh this this old girl still has some teeth on her and she still goes out and uh does the mission so yeah well like they say this is your grandfather's b52 it really is well thank you so much i think what we're going to do is we're going to climb around and see some of the other positions okay sounds great matt have a great time okay sarah where are we well matt we are in the electronic suite of the b-52 so we also have the retired gunner position sitting next to me we are upstairs facing backwards behind the pile in the copilot all right so what exactly do you do as an ewo obviously with the grey current behind me a lot of my equipment is classified but what i do my primary mission is defense of the jet and defense of the crew if you go around the world each country has surface-to-air missiles better known as sams and when they want to take a shot at an aircraft that's thousands of feet in the air they have to radiate with a radar each threat system has an original sound to it and we study those so that we can identify it as soon as possible on board so when you say you listen to it are you getting a tone yeah so we have our headset on we get audio a lot of people in our career field will call it the beeps and squeaks and once i determine what threat or sam that is i apply the appropriate jamming package to it so when they do take a shot hopefully they miss so literally through the beeps and squeaks you can go okay that's an 21 or whatever correct wow so you're pretty good at your job aren't you i try to be there's a lot of studying oh i bet well and you've got a lot of people counting on you exactly so this is the only crew compartment that has one individual so there's a lot of pressure writing on it but you also get a lot of reward too because you're the one who's going to bring the crew home very cool well thank you for your service yeah okay so i'm now in let's just face it a black box black hole um and i'm with newly minted captain king fisher congratulations on the promotion captain um so tell me what you do down here in this very tiny black compartment yeah so this is the uh we call it the offense compartment it's where the navigators or the weapon systems officers sit we work together because a lot of times we'll be trying to navigate and employ weapons at the same time hence two people down here because it can get kind of busy but yeah it's kind of our primary thing is to navigate and work with the weapons i noticed that you guys have the same kind of tunnel situation that we have do you guys ever go back there is it just kind of sealed up since there's no gunner oh we go back there right not on every flight but yeah when we need to uh when we drop weapons out of the bay for dropping you know like 27 gravity weapons out of the bay we don't always have a way to verify that all of them released and that we don't have any weapons still back there okay so in that case what we'll do is we'll descend down and we'll depressurize and then we'll send one of our crew members one of our weapons qualified members back through that door and we'll go back into the bombay make sure the weapons are gone and then we call back here and uh you know i think the lord was still alive no it's it's not too bad how's it like flying in this box you know i i personally love it it's one of those things you get used to um i mean there's a lot going on in here i'm sure there's a lot going on and then you don't have windows we have a floor which works on most jets so you can kind of get something of a picture outside for the most part when you're banking and turning and it's dark down here uh it's fun i i like it i enjoy it i would i don't want to do anything else so well excellent well i am going to stay here for the next month or so i think the camera crew might go out and film other stuff but there's actually like enough room down here to lay down and sleep oh seriously oh i am totally moving in yeah yeah yeah yeah i think it'll be just fine this is an aviation icon a timeless aircraft that has been literally flying for generations from crawling through the second oldest b-52 in existence to watching active b-52s take off at minot air force base and even taking a tour inside with a full crew we've taken you behind the wings of the b-52 strata fortress 69 spun i can't talk in the cold captain archer [Laughter] hi i'm matthew burchette and this is a oh a behind the wings at denver international airport that's lucifer you don't want to make him mad [Music] now i say this a lot but how cool is this [Music] you guys are getting a really inside look at this thing not everyone gets to do that [Music] bam bam bam bam bam [Music] in the 1920s denver was in serious danger of being left in the dust by cheyenne is a major air hub so the denver aeronautical commission decided that if denver was to become a major air transportation center it needed to create the best airport facility between st louis and the west coast they did and denver municipal airport opened on october 17 1929 in 1944 denver municipal was renamed stapleton airfield after ben stapleton denver's mayor when it was built in a major proponent of aviation then in 1964 the airport was again renamed to stapleton international airport by the 1980s stapleton had expanded as much as was practical air traffic continued to increase but the airport was exceeding its capacity to handle all the traffic and passengers one major limitation was that the parallel runways were too close together and couldn't handle simultaneous instrument approaches during low visibility after years of planning and construction denver international airport was opened on february 28 1995. at that time dia was the first new major airport to be built since dallas fort worth more than 21 years earlier in 1974. before we go and check out dia let's look at an artifact in our collection that encapsulates denver's airport history this is the progress of flight mural and it was actually in stapleton airport up on the mezzanine level now not an artifact is jeff reddy jeff thank you so much for being here now your dad was the architect of record for stapleton airport which means that basically he designed the thing that's right actually my dad started working at stapleton back in early 1950s and continued working really up until it's closing so did he actually have something to do with this as well yes this mural was part of the terminal that was built in 1962 roughly and opened in 64. he worked very closely with a local mosaic tile manufacturer working out the scale and the colors and making sure everything fits so i was i was really happy that was able to be salvaged and moved and is here in the museum yeah well we are really glad to have it because it is a really interesting piece now you also brought some stuff from your own collection that probably nobody has ever seen for a really long time can we take a look at that stuff let's do i'd like to share it oh excellent wow this is really cool this is something that you just don't see anymore this is an actual water color right this is dated 1952 so at this point denver had realized they really needed more terminal capacity as well as airport capacity so this was a major project for denver to construct a new terminal shown here is we have a kind of the old iconic clock tower that remained in place even as stapleton expanded that clock tower stayed and the new terminal was built around it this area is a corporate center for united airlines denver was united's home base it was their home up until the early 1970s so united had a presence right on the terminal it was their main offices and now tell me about this one i can see there's the clock tower again but this is completely different this was the concept that was started in the early 1960s because it was again obvious to denver that they needed much more capacity jets were becoming passenger aircraft of choice and denver had to keep up with what was expanding so this was a a concept at the time it was not exactly followed as you can see this has a very large hotel denver was maybe a little in the forefront of thinking of a hotel at their airport not many airports had done that and so that was part of the concept that was not followed through but really the terminal as it was constructed pretty well followed this this rendering i love that they kept the clock tower that's i wish we had kept it and now here again there's the clock tower but they've kind of followed this circular pattern there's no hotel but this is dated 1979 so this is definitely stapleton this is out as it was finally constructed as you can see we do have a new control tower which right which is still there that's the only element of stapleton that's still in place but and then knowing that even with all of this we were going to need something more bam you guys come up with this which was a concept in 67 for a whole new airport exactly i think it would became very apparent to the denver leadership that the airport was going to have to move sooner or later so this was a concept that was developed and the rocky mountain arsenal oh so this this was not really even thought to be out at the uh dia area not at this point i think even then we realized the arsenal was going to be a a candidate and it was looked at even when dia was built but it wasn't really too restrictive in the amount of land that was available at the arsenal which really directed them to move further east and get a lot more real estate for a much bigger airport yeah like they always do you got to have more land well jeff thank you so much for being here and bringing these amazing photos and renderings these guys have not seen the light of day in what 30 or 40 years probably at least wow that is really cool that is really special now that you have the back story of denver's airports it's time to head over to our friends at dia to get an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour of their facilities and uncover their deep dark secrets [Music] so this is the jefferson terminal and we're in the great hall and as you can see it looks kind of a little bit slow today at tsa how many people though do you have come through every year over 61 million passengers navigate through our facility that's a ton of people what's kind of the average wait time on an off-peak period it's going to vary we try to maintain approximately 15-minute wait time or under and dia has three areas for tsa security we do we have three checkpoints um we have one checkpoint that remains open 24 7. okay and then the other two checkpoints are generally open from 4am to approximately pm so one of the things that's going on right now is dia is making some huge changes and this is actually one of the areas where you guys are going to make changes now right down in the middle right there with kind of the white baggage looking thing that's one of the the changes you guys have already implemented already traditionally screening lanes have been more linear and so you basically waited for the person in front of you to process through the screening lane the automated screening lanes allow multiple people to divest or to take off their screened items at the same time and so you can see there's multiple drop locations and you're not waiting for the person in front of you you can actually progress forward even if the person in front of you hasn't unloaded in preparation for that screening process has that sped up the process they say there's a significant increase on those particular lanes and so hopefully the idea would be that once we have all lanes for automated screen lane that will definitely significantly increase our throat foot now it looks like there's not a tsa agent actually looking at the screen is so when you say automated it runs through the x-ray machine and the x-ray machine figures out through an algorithm or something that if there might be something in the baggage that they need to flag the technology assists the staffing of tsa to identify any item that may be a threat or requires additional screening now one of the things that i've been told that will be a drastic change in here and you don't have to answer this question or not but right now this is not really ideal because here we are looking straight down and if i go right down to that far end that's a that's a clean area and if i really wanted to i could drop something to somebody yeah so that's going to change that that is going to change and there is a vulnerability of having this vantage point over the checkpoint and i think that that again is why we're moving the direction we are to have the checkpoints on level six from the great hall i headed outside to get a tour of the airfield my guide for the day was director of operations bruce goetz who showed me the amazing features of this airport [Music] did you know that dia has six runways each dedicated either to take-offs or landings and these babies are huge in fact dia has the longest commercial runway in north america at 16 000 feet long now i know a lot of you have wondered hey why is this airport so far from downtown well the forefathers who envisioned dia had long-term growth in mind currently the airport sits on roughly 53 square miles of land that's enough room to build six more runways without purchasing another acre of land most airports located closer to cities have land restrictions and struggle to build even one runway so it won't be long until dia jumps to the fourth busiest airport on the continent next bruce and i headed up into the ramp tower which controls all the traffic in the ramp area what we're looking at out these windows is literally all the movement of the aircraft to and from the gates out to the taxiways all that kind of stuff and right now we're in a low that's what you call it a little bit of a slow period right now says between banks this early afternoon period and as you mentioned before the faa tower wants to only control runways and taxiways and they want the rest of this area in the center of the airport around the concourses they don't want to manage that so that's left up to our controllers and the united controllers to manage all the movement of aircraft coming into and out of the gate area the controllers up here have a lot of neat tools to manage things safely up above is our aerobond system and that's a real-time display of arriving and departing aircraft so this is i mean literally real-time one second update so as that 757 is making the turn up there we'll immediately see him making the turn so when we were boogieing around out there in the in your super awesome ops truck we would have shown up on this that's correct um and i don't see another vehicle but our vehicle would have said ops 5 because it has a transponder in it that's broadcasting our signal which is ops 5. that's the whole goal of being out here is just safety knowing where everybody is in relationship to everyone else it also keeps you from going out there and taking a nap yeah but i suppose we could see if you parked in one place for a long time we do operate this facility 24 hours a day seven days a week there's always somebody up here and so they're a great dedicated group of people that really know their job well and making sure this airport is running at maximum efficiency and the passenger is everything and the reality is yes there are going to be hiccups there's going to be hiccups here the same way there are in atlanta or chicago o'hare but there's a lot of folks behind the scenes making sure that that delay if it's there is really minimized not only is the ramp tower helping you make your flight on time but so is the snow removal team dia is famous for having one of the largest snow removal teams in the world let's head over to the field maintenance center to see how these guys operate whoa that is an amazing plow what's even more amazing this guy rich brannon he's the ad of field maintenance for dia how cool is that job so rich you guys are like a tiny little not even tiny you're like public works right yeah this is for dia tell me what you guys do out here so we are we are a a big department we're about 150 strong we pretty much do all the preventative maintenance here at dia um we have basically two seasons summer and winter um summer we do uh you know basic maintenance we do paving we do some concrete repair uh we do some repairs on the runways and taxiways um we do erosion fence fence repair we do mowing we have 53 square miles we basically maintain whoa seriously 53 53 square miles and where you guys don't use handheld mowers no only uh only if uh yeah only if you're on the bad list or something but no uh lots of tractors lots of mowers um tons of equipment um we're 365 days a year so we're here all time and then we transition to the snow which is today and we have over almost 200 pieces of equipment just in snow alone and uh yeah we take care of the airfield so runways taxiways so speaking of snow removal dia has a 16 000 foot runway which is literally the longest runway in north america how do you plow that and not just back up planes for hours and hours right so with the 200 pieces of snow equipment we have we divide the airfield in half so we have a east side and a west side runway team that runway particular is on the west side so we have approximately 22 pieces of equipment that clear that runway alone so we're able to clear that runway anywhere between 12 to 15 minutes and we have certain formations that we do that in depending on the snow and the wind um we have so we'll go down the runway in a certain way and it's one pass and the runway's clear if i worked here i would constantly be in trouble and i would be that kind of brew rich took me inside their storage area to see their whole equipment collection and it was nothing short of impressive with over 200 pieces of equipment you can be assured that any snow falling on dia is efficiently dealt with back outside rich had one more huge piece of equipment to show me this is not small no so i mean not only do you have this plow you've got like a whole broom thing going on down there what is this so in addition with the uh the boshon that we were at earlier um we have blowers we have runway brooms um we use loaders box plows and then we have these these are the mb so we have 26 of these they are 72 foot piece of equipment they have a 24 foot plow a little over six and a half feet tall obviously you can stand underneath it uh with the 22 foot broom and these are one of our hardest working pieces of equipment that we use these are the ones that we use to clear the runways and they're huge so why a broom versus a plow or why a combo so unlike removing snow on a street the runways have to be cleaned completely to the pavement so you can't have any residual on the uh the actual taxiways or the runways for airplane to kind of land and take off and transport around in the air okay that makes sense yep so the plow actually takes off the grunt of the snow and then the broom just basically brooms off the residual that's left that the plow leaves and cleans it completely so you're literally getting i mean right down right to the pavement yep and then we treat it with sand or chemical or whatever so this thing is longer than a semi truck how much training goes into the i mean you don't want to just throw me in this thing because it would be a disaster right so you have to have a cdl i mean that's a class b or a class a most of our drivers have class a's we have a robust training program here we have a separate division that actually does the training um our guys are trainers um we have a lot of experience here a very diverse group that um knows what they're doing and uh we train each other and we go through a program it's almost all year round that's about saying that's gotta be all year round even with all that training and all the equipment has there ever been a time that the snow just got the best of you yeah unfortunately um we have we've had a few storms where the wind actually becomes an issue it's more visibility than is the snow depth that we have to fight we're able to clear the snow we have the equipment to do that but 50 mile an hour winds and plus tend to take the visibility away and when it becomes unsafe then we kind of have to pull off so we did 2015 we had a uh about seven hour closure due to the winds um due to the visibility and it just wasn't safe to be out i remember that storm that was a bear yep but we got back in it and yeah there's not really any kind of wind break out here no not at all yep not at all say i'm sitting on my plane and i'm waiting to take off and the snow is falling and i'm getting a little bit angry right um what can you say to me that's going to calm me down just to it's like look i'm doing my job i'm doing it as quickly as i can you know what do you want people who are in the planes to know so you know our people we're we're a humble group uh we work hard um you know we we uh we don't take anything for granted we're out here for the safety of the public we know that uh we care about the public it's you know it's what we do um so you know their families and you know they they make major sacrifices to be out here we're out here all the time making sure that the airfield is clean for the passengers and making sure that everything's safe for them so that's awesome absolutely since snow was in the forecast i left these guys to their work and headed back to the great hall here i met up with chief financial officer gizella shanahan to talk about the impact dia has on denver and what's in store for the future so let's see i think it was 2017 you guys had over 61 million passengers through den 61.4 it was a record-breaking year we're on track for another record-breaking year and we think we'll be at 64 million plus by the time we end december that's amazing what kind of economic impact does that have on the denver area this is the single largest economic driver in our region as one entity the last study that was done to look at that was in 2013 at that point we were generating 26 billion annually it's with a b with a b so that number as you can imagine is much larger the next study will be out within a year but we impact the entire region whether you say region you mean going up that's going into wyoming kansas yes we are a regional airport we serve a multi-state region that's amazing so what is your favorite part about this job my favorite part is every day is different this is such a dynamic industry when you wake up in the morning guaranteed your day will end very different than what you began because there's globally factors can influence what happens here nationally regionally here in city and county of denver but there are so many factors that drive what happens at an airport any given day and for those of us who like that type of challenge this is really an exciting place to be you guys are making some huge changes here can you give us a little bit of an idea of what's going on there yeah so when this airport opened its doors in 1995 newest commercial airport in the u.s as a large airport right at that point in time we were designed for about 50 million annual passengers technology has changed how we move passengers through a check-in process has changed that's allowed us to continue to get north of 60 million in this facility but we're preparing for the future right now and the growth continues here in this region so we need to be able to serve more than 80 million annual passengers out of this facility so what you see 80 million more than that out of just this one facility so what we're doing as you can see the construction is we're preparing this facility to more efficiently process passengers through expanding our security checkpoints we're adding 30 capacity in the gates to make sure more aircraft can come and go and deliver those passengers all right so since they're going to be a lot of people who are probably either have been here or will go through den what would you want a typical passenger to kind of know about day-to-day operations i think what people don't know about an airport is that it is literally a city in and of itself so everything you need to be able to take care of a passenger is all located here so 35 000 people work at the airport in one capacity or another along with hundreds of businesses so whether that's an airline that most people think of or the airport itself all the food and beverage services the retail the rental cars all of that together creates that entire city that works together like a well-tuned machine to get everyone through and out on their way and our job is to make that journey that you take as a passenger as pleasant and seamless as possible after talking with gizella she wished me luck as i headed down into the depths of dia you know what i'm talking about the tunnel all right we're where everybody wants to be we're in the tunnels underneath dia this is where all the weird stuff goes on supposedly but not really this is just where all the baggage comes we're actually at baggage claim 17 we're underneath it so everybody's baggage just comes right through here it goes on to that conveyor belt you grab it you go on your way no big deal but for some reason people believe there are all sorts of weird things going on down here i don't personally believe it but it's i knew it i knew it i knew it i knew it disclaimer that was not a real lizard man as you can tell the employees here have a great sense of humor in fact there are over a thousand people that work in the baggage tunnels every day and where exactly are these tunnels you're wondering they actually run parallel to the train system that transports passengers to and from the concourses after some time exploring the labyrinth of tunnels i was ready to get back up to the surface you never know what you'll run into down here if you're a frequent flyer then you know this airport it's the fifth busiest airport in the country and even has room to grow from driving on the airfield with bruce to touring the amazing selection of snow removal equipment with rich and even going underground to explore the labyrinth of baggage tunnels we've taken you behind the wings of denver international airport [Music] yeah let's get that out of the way i've been wanting to do that all morning see the rest of the museum man i gotta go find lizardmen have a great day be safe watch out all right thank you way to go emily downer [Laughter]

Channel: Spark

Views: 53,443

Keywords: pbs, aviation, space, trailer, wings over the rockies, museums, behind the wings, mattthew burchette, aviation history, aerospace, aerospace history, flight, history, b-52, b-52 stratofortress, stratofortress, buff, rmpbs, behind the wing, b52, air and space museum, matthew burchette, minot air force base, scott hennelly, ben theune, bombers, b-52 bomber, wings over the rockies air and space museum, minot north dakota, aviation education, documentary, stem, stem education, distance learning

Id: HOBpleJn47Q

Length: 52min 2sec (3122 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 26 2021