- This is unbelievable, guys. Let's check out the 747. It's got a second life, just been reactivated
after years of storage. (plane engine roaring) (upbeat music) - Hi, my name is Gloyd Robinson
and a couple of days ago, I had the privilege of
flying this aircraft out of long-term storage in the desert. It was born about 30 years ago and started off flying passengers. Few passengers for about 15 years then was converted to a freighter and then was put into long-term
storage, fate unknown. It was in storage for a few years, and it's just now being reactivated. It's going to go, undergo
some heavy maintenance and then it'll be flying a
revenue freight and cargo again. I'm in the lower electronics bay here for the electronics bay. Down there below my
right foot. That's the, the nose gear of the aircraft and there's this ladder
that we can extend. This slides right down
to the, to the nose gear so we can climb up this ladder
onto the lower E & E deck and then up this ladder
up to the main cargo deck. - Oh man, this is hard works, like never climb up from the
gear and like it's not easy and you get stuck here. You can get stuck here
forever with the 747. - All right, Sam, let's go take a look at the view outside of my office window. - Stairways to the heaven, here I come. Looks really good, I have to say. Everything's functional, right? Yoke is really heavy on a 74. If you're on Airbus, you can do like joystick
flying, lights and easy. But you want to fly Boeing? Yeah, better go to gym. Better start lifting the dumbbells. (upbeat music) I know that even if you have an old car right in the garage, you know, you can't really just drive out after four years of storage, right? It probably won't start so I knew there's
probably a tonnes of work before you're able to take off. The guys in the desert
must be sweating like hell that deal lots of work, months and months. - So Sam, before I show
up to fly the aircraft, the FAA is designated
airworthiness representative comes and signs a special flight permit for us, and that's approving all the
work that the maintenance team has done to reactivate the aircraft. - [Airworthiness
Representative] Still on RTO, all right go for it. - But we also did some
high-speed taxi tests, just a last minute tests
before the aircraft flew. (plane engine revving) - [Airworthiness Representative]
Where'd you put the trim? - [Gloyd] At 3.5. Up to 90 knots, pull the thrust levers
back and the speed brakes are going to come back automatically and then right down here, these auto brakes that it
would normally be set to RTO, rejected take off. Those automatically kick on
max breaking on the aeroplane so it's, it gets your attention. As soon as you pull
the thrust levers back, and those two things
happen to slow you down as fast as possible, as
fast as it possibly can. The aeroplane tips over a little bit and you're thrown against the straps. It's even pretty exciting
knowing that it's coming and most people that have
rejected takeoffs, you know, if you're a line pilot flying around, you're starting to take off, not knowing that that's coming. So it would be an even bigger shock, but it's still pretty thrilling to, to do it when you plan to do it. (upbeat music) So another thing that was
unique about that flight from Mojave to San Bernardino
is because the aircraft had been parked for so long, the FAA asked us to ferry the aircraft with the landing gear, still extended over to this maintenance facility and one of the checks that
they've just finished doing in the maintenance facility
here is called a gear swing. It's exactly what it sounds like. They put the aircraft up on big jacks, raise the aeroplane up off the ground. The gear actually comes
up off of the ground and then they retract the landing gear while it's sitting here in the hangar. It's pretty impressive. (machine screeching) - [Sam] And isn't that a great feeling? - [ Gloyd] It's an awesome feeling to see that the aircraft
is going to keep flying and not just turned into
razor blades and beer cans. (upbeat music) So Sam, I hate to tell you this, but this is not the first
747 you've missed out on. We actually ferried another aircraft out of long-term storage and then to a maintenance
facility last month, the sky blue, a 747-400 freighter. (plane engine revving) (upbeat music) After a hard day at the
office, you can see, we have our own sleeping quarters here, double bunk beds right behind the cockpit. Rooming up. (upbeat music) - This part here is actually
probably the most essential equipment on board to
make coffee for the pilots and I'm so impressed. The galley, everything's
been restored after storage 'cause I've been to the, I've
been to the desert before. There's a lots of planes that
they pulled out all the parts and everything's scattered around. But you know, it's impressive to see when the plane's sculling back, oops, (boing) it looks like I just
broke this part, sorry. - All right, Sam broke the coffee pot. We're not going anywhere now. - [Sam] How long have
you guys been working on this aeroplane? - [Mechanic] In this, especially
on this car, four months. - [Sam] Four months? My gosh. All working now? - [Mechanics] Yep. - [Sam] Except I broke the coffee, that's the essential equipment there. I broke that. You have to rework on that. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. (both laugh) I'm fascinated about your job because you ferry planes
out of desert storage. - So Sam I started my
airline career back in 1999 and I stayed as a line pilot until 2012. By then I'd already found
the company jet test and I've been ferry flying aeroplanes on my days off from the airline. And yeah, it's two very different
experiences doing line pilot work and then ferry flying and demo flying,
test flying this aircraft. I particularly like pulling
aircraft out of the desert that maybe people have given up on. They never thought would fly again. And then seeing them go through
the reactivation process and delivering them to
their new families, their, their new homes and seeing
them start life over again. (plane engine revving) So say I'm walking to the main
deck of the 747 freighter. We can fit up to a 33 different
pallets here on this deck, depending on the pallet size. And that's what makes the
747, the king of freighters. So this aircraft, as we're talking about
starting its life off as a passenger aircraft so you will see some remnants of that, that you won't see in
production freighters, aircraft that came out of
the factory as freighters, windows here or there's still some, it's still one of the passenger
doors visible in the back. Of course, it's deactivated. - I got super excited
when I get on board the 74 and I know there are two differences on a converter freighter
from passenger aeroplane like this one, compared to
a factory new freighter. The first difference is looking at a nose. There is no nose loading
on the converted freighter because it wasn't
passenger bulkhead there. So it's, the nose cannot open
like the factory freighter and the second thing is
interesting is this feature here. You can see this little pouch here? That's the upper deck pouch on the 747, the upper deck bubble. It ends here. That's why you see a
suddenly wider open space at the back here, 'cause
up there is the upper deck. (upbeat music) Alden is the man made me
aware of all the good work they do, not only reactivating
my favourite aeroplane, 747 on my t-shirt here, but
when you combine that aviation, with humanitarian cargoes sending to the less privileged country
where they needed them. That's what's super meaningful and now I got really motivated. They were able to achieve
that a couple of weeks ago on a 747 was about to ferry empty to go for a heavy maintenance overseas. (upbeat music) - [Sam] I saw you guys loaded
80 tonnes of cargo inside that 747, it was so full even
the whole upper deck was fully filled and that was wonderful. It was an opportunity for
everybody to chip in to help out. - So this mission was made
possible because of many organisations and industry leaders pulling resources together to
accomplish this grand mission. 'Cause it's just too expensive
for one organisation to bear, but when you have all these
organisations like Sky One, Boeing, FedEx, Unical, the
Coulson family, and also the, the Las Vegas India Chamber of Commerce, all pulling resources together, it made it possible to air
lift 80 tonnes of life-saving COVID aid from San Bernardino
airport to Delhi, India. It was an amazing mission
and I'm very excited to have the opportunity to
do it again in a few weeks. And we welcome you aboard Sam, it's going to be amazing trip. We're going to positively
impact lives and save lives. - Let's do this. I love 747. You can tell from my t-shirt right? But when you combine that
aviation with something meaningful, like a humanitarian
mission, I'm all out for it. Let's do it, right? - Absolutely. (upbeat music)
Ok, show me your best Tu-144 impression