How The Boeing Jumbo Jet Changed The World | Engineering Giants | Spark

[Music] one aircraft transformed the world request permission to carry at the high power ground grant with two decks carrying over 500 passengers and wings the width of a football pitch it was twice the size of any airliner before [Music] Boeing 747 affectionately known as the jumbo jet okay going up on one I thought it's just awesome the power of these things [Music] as one 747 the Victor x-ray is stripped to its bare-bones and given the biggest overhaul of its life there's a rare opportunity to explain [Music] this is pretty crowd 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 I'll just run and run and run safety is paramount in this finding balance machine every component from its engines to its kettles and 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 a hundred and four hundred and fifty knots do you think I did then boxer let's do a jumbo but it reaches the end of its working life this is engineering Giants 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 riggles worth an electrical engineer with a passion for big machines [Music] and this is Victor x-ray the 747 that's about two letters in to all its engineering secrets this is a shortest flight this plane will no doubt ever do it's why I'm just 132 go to cardiovert and in a few moments time this is where the 747 will arrive this enormous maintenance [Music] all planes are regularly maintained when every six years 747s 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 allow cameras to film the complete mobile 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 apart [Music] so there's an aircraft coming out Victor x-ray was the 1177 jumbo to be manufactured by Boeing it was delivered to the airline 14 years ago and has since flown in 36 million miles equivalently 1500 times around the world the tossing of the shuttle checks please soon as captain Doug Brown shut down the engines and hums the plane over to the Cardiff engineering team I've been offered a rag glimpse inside the flight deck hey Doug thank you for letting me in here this is a problem most of your boys dream isn't it absolutely everybody's doing what is the least used or press which 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 career plane 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 and what that allows us to do is to program the airplane and the autopilot of 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 in me in the absolute worst case you get you can fly the aircraft using these three basic instruments altricial horizon airspeed indicator and altimeter i don't know of any case where a 747s got down to flying on those instruments there is a huge amount of redundancy built in clear [Music] it's time for the 200 million pounds worth of 747 to be carefully towed into the maintenance hangar we're live for the next five weeks [Music] I always wonder what it'd be like to be part the ground crew Heathrow I'm guessing getting a bit of a feel for it now [Music] I'm break on pizza back 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 a flight for you online thank you very much that's right excellent thank you acted what have your hand there we are first-class it's pretty spacious up here very spacious been starting c18 how's the view from up there I'll show you that's the stuff absolutely yeah this is one eighth reserved for the creme de la creme absolutely which makes this see what Mick Jagger's girlfriend 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 life here you can't make any mistakes you'll be right all the time you know there's no garages as they 6,000 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 engineering that the cabin halls 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've 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 upwards of 25 years oh yeah absolutely a very robust very reliable strong aircraft and when well maintained as we do they have gone for many many years yet bill and his team are under massive pressure to finish mix x-rays overhaul on the time on the same day it's due for completion the Jumbo is scheduled to fly passengers to South America delays can cost billions 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-rays fuselage needs to be carried out at height the tip of its tail fin is 20 metres above the ground so the aircraft will be surrounded by this ring designed by these engineers specifically to fit a 747 it's not so you get right up close to the tail fin like I'm here now they 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 planes heaviest components the 18 wheeled landing gear popped into the scaffolding ring the plane can't propped up like a car so it's 180 ton weight is supported on 3 jumbo sized jacks as the floor is lowered [Music] 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 jeez [Music] 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 scan the front one bone so it's mechanisms are designed to offer enough resistance to control the speed of deployment so now they drop 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 these two plates at the top here we're on the nose wheel you've got no brakes so when the aircraft takes off the wheels are spinning pretty fast and so those are basically big skates 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 see with British Airways everybody knows the label dabrander and they assume that your cabin crew you know him it is naturally assumed that you work in engineering so it's something to be proud of I have got three children they're very proud that mummy works on a client's and fixes aeroplanes so I definitely want to tell the kids go on from work one day and you call your friends saying about getting stuck in the office and you go hey 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 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 wanna hear there's lots of noises different noises that go on on an aircraft when it's in flight and but you can't help it it's in our blood if you like before everything disappears from the cabin this is the and safe stays office cabin crew member beckie wodsworth has agreed to reveal some aspects of working on a 747 she spent over 10,000 hours in the air and planes like Victor x-ray where space is extremely tight yeah feces in the ovens on an average flight beckoner 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 example though you don't want them both coming down ill with the same thing and it's those little flash points that I mean who decides first I'm gonna captain captain first copilot gets what's left that's today only the captain lost to say you choose first wow what a lovely English tradition a 14-hour flight in cramped conditions is hard work so today 747 crews were able to use a secret compartment above the passengers head at the stairs there is there the crew rest area spaces of a premium isn't it okay Cousy oh wow so what what's the longest flight you do it's about sir 14 hours from Singapore and in that time then how long would you get to spend enjoying this look to it you'd get about the essence three and a half hours rest I think what you also showed out is a little button to call a member of the public got to help back down in the cabin the next test is on a critical safety component that Airlines hope their passengers will never see what that was impressive failure of the chutes is not an option with five depending on them they must inflate within seconds and stay inflated so all 12 chutes 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 a open up within a certain time limit okay which on these particular unit is three seconds okay so what's the process behind inflating one of the universe the door open yeah and then a cylinder then charge of 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 lifejacket a small canister can provide enough air but the same system would require a three meter long canister on an escape chute [Music] 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 that was pretty quick yeah three seconds we happy with that yeah Wow and look at it I mean it's absolutely solid then testing the escape chute is the easy part and now like a parachute the 30 square meters of material must be folded precisely back into its container just hogs we're meetin and that typically that'll take how long six hours of our deliver Wow it's as much an art as science it's all too easy to take flying for granted as passengers were oblivious to the fact that the enormous metal tube were traveling in is flying through the air at close to 600 miles an hour and at a height similar to Everest an atmosphere I'm able to support life engineer cabin clever stock 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 a rise in altitude means a decrease in pressure but also to a comfort for passengers it has to be maintained stocks remember on the ground were at 14.7 PSI and actually rising through the air it reduces down and once you get below 10 psi your standard it's not very comfortable you start having breathing problems and it is so thin that you are 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 flight pressurizing the cabin also called metal fatigue because as pair 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 or 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 airliners internal shell engineers have to remove almost every fixed Tuen fit inside of the cabin some seven four samples can take over 500 passengers but airlines can you attract in the flock to choose their own seating and Victor x-ray McGregor - you must strip out 299 seats make with the right allen key to just sort of steal yourself a bit of extra legroom in flight no it wouldn't hurt a lot less you got having their drift with you as well no get past security now you wouldn't know light they're lighter than a settee oh yeah there you go some done once removed Victor x-ray seats are sent to the interiors workshop to be reupholstered and put through their paces by veteran seat tester mark JK so is it your job then to sit in this chair watch a few films play a few games and then say yeah it was a terrible job but somebody's got to do it back in the hangar work continues in the cabin all these all the days all the centre trough area there guess we worked a hundred make the window protectors and blinds taken out since the skeleton the plane is the behind ear that's the framework aluminium frame yeah it's all aluminium well now steel Steel's too heavy warning aircraft to be as much posture than you are nut installation is pretty vital isn't it 60 cents or minus 50 degrees outside yes I believe about minus 56 degrees around 30 to 35 thousand from us enough to protect you from that minus 50 yard outside it's two days into the alcohol 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 and lo and behold we found a little crack down in the corner which we're gonna put right yeah your favorite seat one a shift manager Paul Thomas has discovered a minor crack in one of Victor x-rays floor supports right in the corner you can see the telltale and it runs right to the corner they normally emanate from from fastener hole so a rivet and then run out or sharp edges you know what you can see you can see the line yeah shocking so yeah we pretty much go to replace that partner and you you visually inspect the whole structure absolutely if we don't if we don't take that out now that crack I'll just run and run and run and run and run so we found it now so the floorboards will come up we'll do rivet all this area just for that I mean just for that small little crack yeah reassuring you it is reassuring but yeah because I mean my car is you know COLLADA call it a crack haha no lay-bys at 30,000 feet I'm afraid no lay-bys in the sky no lame reasons go absolutely yeah [Music] it's day four of the overhaul and works beginning on Victor x-rays largest components it swings really from wingtip to wingtip we're looking at about 211 feet so having that in the huge wingspan that's about football fits there at a football pitch yeah overseeing the work on the aluminium and carbon fiber wings this 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 here now you get a topi displacement up and down is about 32 feet that's because you don't want to a wing to be rigid they need to allow for turbulence and nito low 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 and padule-- 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 and 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 Aaron deflects down the matters which is 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-rays wings are subjected to enormous forces apprentice Lois Robinson who has been scouring the surface of this wing to find any damage that may have occurred we found some damage during inspections which damage is round there where all that is 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's engineering passion runs in the blood three generations of my family have worked so it's just ran with the family I suppose yeah and they they on ship with you sometimes no my dad's on the opposite chef to me okay which is okay and my bampi is retired now yeah so they use eleven years off [Music] Louis'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 speed the only way the crucial hydraulic and backup electrical control systems can be thoroughly checked is to remove the flaps [Music] Louis has to control this crane with absolute precision the crane has been set to point nine of a ton which is the exact weight of the flat though remove it that so when the last guy undoes the last bolt the wing doesn't drop to the floor or fly to the ceiling she off okay slowly change all the isotopes all right look at his face he's loving it during flight air passes over these blankets and wings and 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 weight if you could see it how would that static look coming up it 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 it will okay slightly right yes and sometimes in high electric storms and and certainly 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 again so how does it play to deal with this phenomenon this laboratory at the University of Cartersville holds the answer because this is one of the few places in the world where scientists led by Phil like our have the technology to make lightning of their own it might sound bad during these lightning tests to 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-of-the-art laboratory tests new materials as aircraft manufacturers look to find lighter more cost-effective alternatives to the other mininum currently use so why do planes get hit like the airplane scenes 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 plane survive to find out we're going to test this aluminium model similar to our own 747 a certain let's blow it okay you might have the best job in the world sometimes I think so there's a lot of paperwork to them now it's my chance to play guard more basically when I say fire is very easy just press fire and fire so easy for model airplane survived a day look it looked perfectly entitled everything in everyone inside a plane protected by the aluminium fuselage which is a good conductor it allows electricity to take the path of least resistance one of the few is a large 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 [Music] back at the hangar work to straight back the 747 continues today engineers were about to reveal one of the parts of the plane that the public never sees the nosecone all radome as it's known Sheils 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 out 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 it needs to take Victor x-ray is now a week into it's over and next is most valuable components 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 happened is it come crashing to the floor as experienced as he is it's a nervous moment for team leader Scott crawl a guy starts an apprentice ten years ago and I've worked my way 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 an engine exert enormous pressure on the mouth that hold them in place it's crucial that engineers remove the engines so they can examine these fixtures for signs of where 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 about eight bolts eight bolt yeah so just for the friend and four at the back that's what the boys are in doing and doing out loans when the forward verdict the eight volts are crucial in holding the engine in place so each one will be sent to a laboratory and tested for weaknesses these are all get sent away now and eat eat a lot of a new site going back on NDTV non-destructively tested nice maybe x-rays yeah yeah ultrasound reading ultrasound of people inside idea for the drop the seven-ton engine is supported in a sling attach to the crane it's an impressive operation to make sure this is all rigged up perfectly well then nothing can go wrong yep you'll just be pushing it as it's heavy to push or once now is suspended it's quite feels weird to supporting it obviously we try not to with all the work is done by the crane yeah all right so we let that do it okay play come down so happening take down 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's like anxiety down again though they even steel toe-caps would withstand the force in one of these coming down looking pretty good we're almost there yes it's in when that lady and gentleman is a wrap so the end of the day Scott when you go home you 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 in work all today and I say honey today daddy fit an engine not just any engine and rb211 ah here we go further on impression now yeah when turning the big fan of the film sucks in air which is very engrained mixed with a mr. fuel an igniter in a combustion chair this produces a huge continuous blast of energy in the form of hot glasses these are directs out the part of the engine could you've seen some of the engines first the energy he's also used this something more handy this is directed [Applause] [Music] juicing the rest the engines 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 damaged heavy gonna wear a sack I mean it's yeah it's not inconsiderable 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 spoke with surface the blade that even the trailing edge of the blade for any erosion damage again a chips or dents yep and corners missing or any impact damage you can get on the surface of the blade blades can be damaged by hail or bird strikes all the blades have got on the bleed route here you see all the market on the blade yeah each blade is serialized and they put in a specific location okay balance the hub so much like on a car wheel say when you've had saved nothing with your with your car where it needs to be balanced so when it's going around a high speed it's not 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 well [Music] fully loaded Victor x-ray needs approximately a hundred and twenty thousand horsepower from its four engines to get into the air that 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 will know you and generating that level of thrust is thirsty work this is pretty crowd 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 versus it's the main tanks 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 midsection of the aircraft basically it holds 65,000 litres 65,000 these certainly and that is that all in this but here I know this is one compartment of six compartments going towards the rear of the aircraft where there's more than one tank on a plane there's eight in all so how much fuel were you looking out there across all of it the fuel quantity for the whole aircraft is 216 thousand liters is massive I mean your average-sized cars what 60 liters later so approximately three and a half thousand cars you could fill with one jumbo full of aviation field [Music] Victor x-ray is now two weeks into its five-week overall and so far it's on schedule [Music] Engineers have completed over 5,000 and the 12,000 jobs that need to be done before the 747 can be classified as air worm [Music] in the coming the last remaining floor and wall panels need to be stripped along with the toilet module yeah no no I'm good to go make well okay I've been roped into hell okay distinct me did tell you that now make on their 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 developed the sort of urban myth that suggests the same happens on planes is that has I've ever been true no I ends up in the earth freights which is right there in the back of it right before tanks I last met Mick removing all the seat and I wondered if working on aircraft for nineteen 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 yeah so I mean we'll get on it we've gone all that he too loves all right something like that and we sit there and the flaps all go down and I'm sorry I'll go ripping your hand that's the flaps going down this will go sure up I don't want to know I don't know yeah in an industry where safety is paramount even a toilet is a highly engineered piece of cake as an electrical component good for the fire it has to undergo stringent tests before it's passed tests are carried out at the corners avionics facility outside Carly [Music] and calibrated by highly skilled engineering so what happens when you go to the toilet of an airplane Martin by train you actually finish dude what were you doing your pressure liquid button which is on the side of the toilet the need in the cabin there's a massive washing noise that which is what's reviewed Julio non-natural rig we got a spray of water from the top and the vacuum gets created in the bowl and sex sexy all the way above 16,000 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 I see [Music] types and wasting 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 good point actually because sometimes you make it 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 they're fresh faker you might not use it but I probably would yeah and the other guys that we get as well although it might seem a little on a flight electrical powers at a premium so even the cat for the tester to make sure they don't use too much electricity and take it away from a more important system engineer Simon or is currently checking that these cables draw the correct code while taking the exact time to reach the precise temperature to make a perfect cup of tea we violated eighty-three Celsius plus + or minus - Celsius the board of tasters an incisor say PG tipps or whatever it says ever says boil accounts is hot but not boiling yeah yeah I some a a Eva even the kettles are over all the tests we tested yeah when the 747 flew for the first time over 40 years ago many of these devices being tested here haven'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] Victor x-rays passenger compartment is the cargo bay surrounded by the 172 miles of wiring that connect all the planes complex systems just looking around and there are miles and miles of wiring here many of these cables flow from the pilots controls to these vital computers currently being examined by avionics engineer NIC Geordi the first 747s are designed back in the 60s presume those wouldn't have had any of this know their racks were built but it had totally different boxes on the box they were much more primitive than they are now so how would what these boxes do now have been done back then a lot of the functions done by these boxes used to be done by the flight engineer that rolls are done them because all these guys done bugging me 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 delve inside is complex engines and experience the impressive mass of its landing gear but could the planes computers I've just seen control all of these without the 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 over to x-ray to Cardiff he's going to demonstrate a seven four seven support a pilot in one of the airline's eight million pound flight simulators right I'll just give you a chance to fly the airplane manually for a little while as it's just climbing your way for gassing away and then what we'll do is we'll put the autopilot in we'll bring it round that will do an automatic approach and all to land on to this runway okay so potentially there are three planes to be thinking about and one is yeah pulling back yeah I'll be able to live off vertically yet you've got the steering in the pedals yeah to keep yourself down the runway all that famed yeah but then you've also got the out this horizontal level as well do you keep control what does this control all four of the engine so engines one two four forward thrust on there and you can see the ancient spool up there we go it's actually on there yeah okay now I'm gonna put full power on no we're coming up to walks the speed that would ask you a pullback they already won rotate so back on the ankle don't turn the stick while you're at eight okay in the middle [Music] that's nice father I'm going to select the landing gear up it's amazing this is amazing [Music] once up it's a tight 360 degree turn so that we can simulate automatically you see the airfield I can't straight ahead yes we're going to like the outfit of the auto pilot run through and we'll go right through to North Island we'd also probably be able to do that itself the aircraft will learn itself if the pilot has set it up properly to do so fine [Music] also quite controlling the second ball sevens approach to the runway altering the pitch and direction of the aircraft to also control the level autopilot cannot extend the wing flaps which slow the aircraft down crucial money 50 no it's going in you see 30 attended until then can the 747 land itself [Music] apply the brakes so now you take your reverse thrust on we do okay as it fantastic the semaphore seven 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 is the data recorder the call to the telemetry of the flight and on the left is the voice recorder which records all the pilots voices 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 a good orange and that's because it's clearly identified in any incident it's a big old tape recorder it is a big chief recorder that's what basically it is as you can see as well the tape is actually surrounded by ether to thermal packs which are Chauth spring loaders spring Lord in Israel yeah with two thermal packs which are chalk impregnated with water so on the event of a fire that water turns to steam keeps there in that tape he steam temperature okay so it won't destroy the tape and what sort of temperature range is it specified - it should really should withstand 1,000 degrees C over a 30 minute period of time that's where a VA Shenfield burns so the bit you're opening now inside there that is the the precious cargo of this is the part that interested in that will record the last 30 minutes of any flight it may look our cake when the 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 [Music] 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 can 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 run flaps par the Kruger flaps okay Martin Gregory's is the for fair Salvage international with a lot obviously the largest and dismantling company in the UK in fact in Europe at Cotswolds Airport in Gloucestershire Mark and his team salvaged over 40 aircraft a year these here can we have a closer look at these Kenya that they are 747 inboard landing gears removed from a 747 400 if he's done huge amount of landings than the value of that is kind of dropping but I think this has done quite a lot of landings we're still you know still not cheap roughly how much then you're probably looking at about 300 thousand dollars for a set landing gears like this on a 707 Markel salvaged up to 1200 parts which will eventually result to Airlines around the world precision electronics means a secondhand coffeemaker could fetch up to 3,000 pounds even a simple bowl for the toilet itself or as much as 500 pounds these are the front screens of the 747 that got very high value and I would say probably right about $30,000 well each for each screen yeah because these ones here obviously they're heated the heated element is running through them I think they're gold heating elements that go through them okay so in here now you've got so that there's a very thick that they're really thick screens they wrote their laminators which you can just see the elements see the elements in there a bit like your car heater front screen as well that hits home the the value of the whole industry yeah this is massive machine massive 80% 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 they're 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 overall 18 days ago this plane was flying passengers around the world and today what it looks like in size up Bihar cried from what it would have been then in this skeletal state there are signs of the 747s evolution well right at the very front of the aircraft here and above us is the flight day 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 Jumbos 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 ish yeah you see the cable was heading off through the cabin and off to the rudder keeping it mechanical keeping it simple now the flight deck looks a lot different now without the seats and all the flight insurance the card is 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 [Applause] but when a 747 has come to the end of its working life like this one of Cotswolds Airport there's no turning back for Mark Gregory in his salvage team we've removed over 130 tons of equipment and all were left with is no no 100 tons of aircraft which has got very little value because the only value up there is the metal at this point the final part of the demolition process can begin so we'll start with take the tail off for us to the talent then we'll work forward we have all the Rings into the fuselage and through the rest of the body there doesn't take very long it's about three days to do a Center for self it really is all the guts and the veins and everything just being pulled out with a whole Christine berries the heap of scrap 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 recognisable fragments of the aircraft remain so this is a leading edge and this is a solid where you go that you see here yeah thin but pretty I mean take some batter though yeah that's pretty durable then as the wing moves back he doesn't need to be as doesn't meet to be as strong so they make it out of this lightweights doing anything for engineering being led by nature isn't it honeycomb okay let's say you can I mean you can see the thickness that's so thin some seven four seven flight decks are spared demolition to be used as the shell in the construction of flight simulators Wow oh yeah a bit different like a relic look at that this is proper kind of aviation history how it all used to be all these controls here's where flight engineer would have sat when you needed one obviously on Victor x-ray that's that's gone now [Music] the remaining colonists of the 747 like this still have a recycling value worth up to 35,000 pounds [Music] pure enough to be used again in aircraft construction as 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 we're on our way back to Cardiff where Victor x-ray should now have been given new lease of life last time last time indeed it's heading out tomorrow evening it's due to head back into service [Music] there is Victor x-ray complete edition super hidden [Music] it does smell you it just smells you 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 5,000 separate paths including 11 brand-new toilets 386 square meters of new carpet has been fitted along with 285 refurbished seats [Music] and there were 14 brand-new first-class seats per passenger paying upwards of 5,000 pounds of white with balloon Wow hey 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 his four engines are working [Music] but Hugh gives 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 we've got the brakes on and where we can't do more than one engine at full power at a time you have to do them one at a time really so if you have all for you we'd be taking off well taking off through the middle of Cardiff Airport yeah request permission to carry at the high power ground run okay going up on one on four [Music] the sensation have been here right now is kind of what you get when you hit turbulence mid-flight yet we're here on the runways outside got--if Airport it's just awesome the power of these things that was a brilliant fun experience to me Hugh but from a technical perspective how did he go all when well we had no problems at all got the high power and he was lovely and smooth and it passed all the tests that we needed to do so and there's running those engines up to throttle like that get any less exciting any time now I've been doing it for about five years now I still love it the following day and on time Victor x-ray is ready to bid farewell to cut [Music] for the engineers this is the moment when all the hard work pays off by providing other job ownership you know especially if you've been on it from start to finish and you think it's you look back I've done that works and as well when you see it barreling down the runway as well a hundred and forty hundred and fifty knots do you think I did then boxer 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 30,000 working hours and 12,000 separate jobs Victor x-ray is ready once again to take to the skies [Music] to her painstaking strip the aircraft down and built it back up again there's the satisfaction of knowing yes [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Spark

Views: 1,390,530

Keywords: Boeing, Boeing engineering, Boeing science, Boeing technology, Spark, aerospace, airplane construction, airplane mechanics Jumbo Jet, airplane mechanics aviation, airplane mechanics quality, airplane mechanics safety, airplane mechanics science, airplane safety, aviation, manufacturing, passenger plane, passenger plane construction, passenger plane science, passenger plane technology, passenger plane underbelly

Id: kYQ6Xl3yuZI

Length: 58min 57sec (3537 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 17 2018