Engineering Giants (2012–…): Season 0, Episode 0 - Jumbo Jet Strip Down - full transcript
One aircraft transformed the world.
Request permission to carry
out a high-power ground run.
With two decks carrying
over 500 passengers...
..and wings the width
of a football pitch...
..it was twice the size
of any airliner before.
The Boeing 747.
Affectionately known
as the jumbo jet.
OK, going up on one on four.
It's still
an engineering marvel.
It's just awesome,
the power of these things.
Now, as one 747, Victor X-ray, is
stripped to its bare bones and given
the biggest overhaul of its life,
there's a rare opportunity
to explore deep inside
its hidden features.
Wow! This is pretty cramped.
HE LAUGHS
That is massive!
A 200-strong team
of highly skilled engineers
take on the challenge
of checking over 20,000 parts
of this mighty aircraft.
If we don't take that out now, that
crack will just run and run and run.
Safety is paramount
in this finely balanced machine.
Every component, from its engines
to its kettles,
must be intricately examined
for damage.
The amount of knowledge and experience
we need to learn is just incredible.
I've got three children. They're very
proud that Mummy works on aeroplanes.
When you see it barrelling
down the runway at 150 knots,
you think, "I did them bolts up."
And we reveal
what happens to a jumbo
when 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 Wrigglesworth,
an electrical engineer
with a passion for big machines.
And this is Victor X-ray, the 747 that's about
to let us in to all its engineering secrets
This is the shortest flight
this plane will no doubt ever do.
'It's flying just 132 miles
from Heathrow to Cardiff Airport.'
And in a few moments' time,
this is where the 747 will arrive.
This enormous maintenance hangar.
All planes are regularly maintained,
but, 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.
This is the first time that
British Airways have allowed cameras
to film the complete
overhaul of one of their aircraft.
And we'll be there for every critical
stage in the engineering process.
This is a perfect opportunity for me and
Rob to see deep within the Boeing 747
and appreciate how amazing
these enormous machines are.
So there's the aircraft coming now.
Victor X-ray is the 1,172nd jumbo
to be manufactured by Boeing.
It was delivered to the airline
14 years ago
and has since flown 36 million miles,
equivalent to 1,500 times around the world.
Time for shut-down checks, please.
As Captain Doug Brown
shuts down the engines
and hands the plane over
to the Cardiff engineering team,
I've been offered a rare glimpse
inside the flight deck.
Hey, Doug, thank you for letting me in
here. This is, well, it's every boy's dream.
Absolutely. Every boy's dream. What
is the least used or pressed switch?
To be honest, very few of them
get used in flight.
When the 747-400 was designed
in 1989, it moved from being
a three-crew aeroplane with
a flight engineer's panel there,
which had thousands of buttons,
dials and gauges
and a full-time flight engineer,
to an automated two-crew aeroplane
with just two pilots.
So this is a simplified version?
In some ways, yes, but what's going
on behind the scenes is quite complex.
The actual heart of the aeroplane
is this flight-management computer.
And what that allows us
to do is to programme the aeroplane,
and the autopilot of the aircraft, with
a lot of the information before a flight
and as we go through the flight, we're
using the flight-management computer
to control the aircraft as much
as anything else on the aeroplane.
In the case of raw flying, what is the
minimum amount of controls you'd need?
CAPTAIN LAUGHS
In the absolute worst case,
you can fly the aircraft using
these three basic instruments.
Artificial horizon, air-speed
indicator and altimeter.
I don't know of any case where a 747 has
got down to flying on those instruments.
There is a huge amount of redundancy
built into the aeroplane.
Now, it's time for the £200 million worth of 747
to be carefully towed into the maintenance hangar,
where it will
live for the next five weeks.
I always wondered what it would be like
to be part of the ground crew at Heathrow.
I guess I'm getting
a bit of a feel for it now.
Handbrake on. Good to go.
Now, I can finally climb aboard
through what is currently
'the only way in - a maintenance
hatch in the belly of the plane.'
Welcome. Welcome aboard BA
flight 319. Thank you very much.
How was your flight? Excellent, thank
you. Cheers, mate. I'll give you a hand.
There we are. First class. It's pretty
spacious up here. I've been sat in seat 1A.
How's the view from up there?
I'll show you.
Ooh, that's the stuff! Absolutely, yeah, this is
1A. Reserved for the creme de la creme. Absolutely.
Which makes this seat what? Mick
Jagger's girlfriend. ROB LAUGHS
That'll do.
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.
Number one to us is safety.
Safety, safety, safety.
We are looking after people's lives
here. You can't make any mistakes.
You've got to be right all the time.
There are no garages at 36,000 feet.
Over the next five weeks,
engineers will work in teams
within different areas of the plane,
methodically searching
for any signs of damage
amongst Victor X-ray's six million
components.
One day we'll come into work
and we'll be doing the cabin,
which is very involved.
There's all sorts of different
disciplines of engineering
that the cabin holds and the next day
we could be on the wing.
Next day, we could be doing the engine runs at
the end of the check, which is pretty exciting.
This complex operation will take
over 30,000 working hours,
with the team having
to complete 12,000 separate jobs.
We pretty much run
seven days, 24 hours.
General manager Bill Kelly is in
charge of the maintenance facility.
How many years
would that be flying for?
This aircraft could fly
upwards of 25 years.
Really? Absolutely.
A very robust, very reliable,
strong aircraft.
When well maintained, as we do, they
will go on for many, many years yet.
Bill and his team
are under massive pressure
to finish
Victor X-ray's overhaul on time.
On the same day
it's due for completion,
the jumbo is scheduled to fly
passengers to South America.
Delays can cost millions of pounds.
You get something wrong
in maintenance where it delays you
by a day or two days,
it can really impact
the rest of the operation,
so you need to be on the ball.
Much of the work on Victor X-ray's
fuselage needs to be carried out at height.
The tip of its tailfin
is 20 metres above the ground,
so the aircraft will be
surrounded by this rig,
designed by these engineers
specifically to fit a 747.
It's not until you get up close
to the tailfin that you get
a sheer sense of scale
for the whole thing.
From the tip
to the ground is almost 70ft.
Looking back along
to the front of the aircraft
is a perspective
I've never seen before.
It's seriously impressive.
The first big engineering challenge
is to test one of the plane's
heftiest components -
the 18-wheeled landing gear.
Locked into the scaffolding rig,
the plane can't be propped
up like a car,
so its 180-tonne weight is supported
on three jumbo-sized jacks,
as the floor is lowered.
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.
Whoa, Jeez!
And here they come.
The landing gear weighs as much
as a double-decker bus,
so if it was simply allowed to fall down,
it could potentially cause serious damage.
Just getting the front one done.
So its mechanisms are designed
to offer enough resistance
to control the speed of deployment.
Now they've dropped, the guys
are giving them a push
to get them finally locked
into place.
If you're in the air and you have 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 them back into place.
What are these two plates
at the top here?
On the nose wheel,
you've got no brakes,
so when the aircraft takes off,
the wheels are spinning pretty fast.
So those are, basically,
big scuff plates.
The tyres will hit them and it just
slows them down and stops them.
OK, OK.
Inside Victor X-ray,
the cabin team are preparing
to strip out all the seats.
Melanie Geddes and Janice Nash are
among a growing number of female engineers
working at the facility.
You say you work for British Airways.
Everybody knows the brand,
and they assume you are cabin crew.
They don't naturally assume
that you work in engineering.
So it's something to be proud of.
I've got three children.
They're very proud that Mummy works
on aeroplanes and fixes aeroplanes.
So it's definitely one
to tell the kids.
You go home from work one day, your boyfriend
saying, "I've been stuck in the office."
You say, "I've been walking the wing
today." 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 can't help it. I wish I didn't.
Sometimes I put headphones on,
because you don't want to hear.
There's lots of noises, different noises,
that go on on an aircraft when its in flight.
You can't help it.
It's in our blood, if you like.
'Before everything disappears from
the cabin...' This is the CSD's office.
'..cabin-crew member Becky Wadsworth has agreed
to reveal some aspects of working on a 747.'
'She's spent over 10,000 hours
in the air
'on planes like Victor X-ray,
where space is extremely tight.'
These are the ovens.
These are the ovens. OK.
On an average flight, Becky and her
team will serve 300 passengers
over a tonne of food and drinks.
Is it true that when there are two pilots on
board, they have to have a different meal?
That's... Absolutely.
So should there be something wrong
with the chicken, for example,
you don't want them both
coming down ill with the same thing.
It's those little flashpoints. Who
decides first? It's normally the captain.
Captain first, co-pilot gets what's
left. That's it.
The captain will often say,
"You choose first."
Oh, what a lovely English tradition.
'A 14-hour flight
in cramped conditions is hard work.
'So today's 747 crews are able to
use a secret compartment...
'..above the passengers' heads.'
Up the stairs is the crew rest area.
Space is a premium up here! Absolutely!
Cosy.
Oh, wow. What's the longest flight
you do?
It's about 14 hours, from Singapore.
And in that time, how long would you
get to spend enjoying this luxury?
You'd get about
three-and-a-half-hours' rest.
I think what you also should have
is a little button
to call a member of the
public up to help! SHE LAUGHS
Back down in the cabin, the next
test is on a critical safety component
that airlines hope their passengers
will never see.
Go on.
HE LAUGHS
Whoa!
That was impressive.
Failure of the chutes
is not an option.
With lives 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 to open up
within a certain time limit... OK.
..which on this unit
is three seconds. OK.
So what's the process
behind inflating one of these?
The door will open
and then the cylinder charges
at 300 psi.
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-metre-long canister on an escape chute.
So, instead, when triggered, the canister
of compressed carbon dioxide and nitrogen
delivers only an initial boost.
The clever technique is that
these gases are forced through
a narrow gap, which causes them
to accelerate rapidly.
This acceleration creates a vacuum
that then sucks in enough ambient air
to inflate the entire slide
in three seconds.
Woo-hoo-hoo!
That was pretty quick.
Three seconds. We happy with that?
Yeah. Wow.
And look at it, I mean,
it's absolutely solid.
Testing the escape chute
is the easy part.
Now, like a parachute, the 30 square
metres of material must be folded
precisely back into its container,
measuring just half a square metre.
And, typically, that would take how
long? Six hours of hard labour. Wow.
It's as much an art as science.
It's all too easy
to take flying for granted.
As passengers, we're oblivious to the fact that
the enormous metal tube we're travelling in
is flying through the air
at close to 600 miles an hour.
And at a height similar to Everest -
an atmosphere unable
to support life.
Engineer Gavin Beverstock
is showing me
how Victor X-ray pumps air
from its engines into the cabin
to create an atmospheric pressure
similar to conditions on the ground.
A rise in altitude means
a decrease in pressure.
But, also, due to comfort for
passengers, it has to be maintained.
When we're on the ground,
we're at 14.7 psi
and, as you're rising through
the air, it reduces down.
Once you get below 10 psi,
it's not very comfortable,
you start having breathing problems.
The air's so thin, 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 6,000
and 8,000 feet, comparable
to the world's highest cities.
That means reduced oxygen
and is one of the reasons
we often feel tired on a flight.
Pressurising the cabin
can also cause metal fatigue,
because, as air is pumped in
and out of the aircraft,
its fuselage expands and contracts.
You can see the dimples
along the skin of the plane
which, when it's pressurised up
in the air, all gets smoothed out.
It's a pretty amazing
bit of engineering,
but this frequent flexing
of the fuselage can cause cracks.
It's one of the major reasons
why Victor X-ray is undergoing
this intensive operation.
In order to thoroughly examine every
inch of the airliner's internal shell,
engineers have to remove almost
every fixture and fitting inside the cabin.
Some 747s can take
over 500 passengers.
But airlines can use tracks in the
floor to choose their own seating plan.
On Victor X-ray, Mick Gregg and his
team must strip out 299 seats.
With the right allen key, do you steal
yourself a bit of extra leg room in-flight?
Would that...? No, it wouldn't!
Not unless you'd got a hammer
and drift with you!
You'd never get past security!
No, you wouldn't.
They are light. They're lighter
than a settee, aren't they? Yeah.
There you go, Tom, done.
Once removed, Victor X-ray's seats are sent
to the interiors workshop to be reupholstered
and put through their paces by
veteran seat tester Mark Jago.
Is it your job to sit
in this chair,
watch films, play a few games
and say, "Yeah, we're good" (?)
It's a terrible job,
but somebody's got to do it!
Back in the hangar,
work continues in the cabin.
All these side walls
are yet to come out.
All the dadoes on the bottom
are all to come out.
300 floor panels must be removed.
All the centre trough area there
gets reworked.
180 window protectors
and blinds taken out.
And 140 side wall panels
stripped off.
Here we go. This is the skeleton
of the plane, here. This is the...
Behind here, that's the framework.
Aluminium frame?
Yeah, it's all aluminium.
Wouldn't have steel, it's too heavy.
We want an aircraft
to be as light as possible.
And that insulation
is pretty vital, isn't it?
Because it is -50 degrees outside.
Yes, it is.
It gets to about -56 degrees
at around 30 to 35,000 feet.
And that's enough to protect
you from that -50? Yeah.
It's two days into the overhaul
and most of the first-class cabin
fittings have been removed.
The team can now begin
the painstaking task of searching
every inch of the internal frame
for the smallest of defects.
Lo and behold, we've found
a little crack down in the corner,
which we're going to put right.
Yeah, your favourite seat, 1A.
'Shift manager Paul Thomas
has discovered a minor crack
'in one of Victor X-ray's
floor supports.'
..which is right in the corner.
You can see the telltale,
and it runs right to the corner.
They normally emanate
from fastener holes or a rivet
and then run out.
Sharp edges, you know.
Yeah, well, you can see the line,
it's tracking.
So, yeah, we pretty much
got to replace that part now.
You visually inspect the whole
structure? Yeah, absolutely.
If we don't take that out now,
that crack will just run and run
and run and run.
So, we've found it now.
So, the floorboards will come up.
We'll de-rivet all this area.
Just for that?
Just for that small, little crack.
Yeah.
Reassuring, huh?
It is reassuring, because, I mean,
my car is, you know...
Call that a crack?
I'll show you cracks.
No lay-bys at 38,000 feet,
I'm afraid.
There are no lay-bys in the sky.
No, absolutely.
It's day four of the overhaul.
And work is beginning on Victor
X-Ray's largest components,
its wings.
From wingtip to wingtip,
we are looking at about 211 feet,
so a huge, huge wingspan.
That's about a football pitch then?
About a football pitch, yeah.
Overseeing the work on the aluminium
and carbon fibre wings
is shift manager Chris Morgan.
Obviously, they're very sturdy,
but there's quite a bit
of movement.
Yeah. You can see
there's movement there now.
You get a total displacement
up and down of about 32 feet.
That's because you don't want
a wing to be rigid.
They need to allow for turbulence,
for air flow.
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?
Most people have that question
answered with Bernoulli's theory.
Bernoulli's theory suggests that air
going over the top of the wing
has to travel further
than the air going underneath.
Because it has got to travel
further, it speeds up.
Because it speeds up, the air
particles spread out and diffuse.
This results in lower pressure
above the wing
than the pressure beneath.
That pressure difference literally
pushes the plane into the air.
But this doesn't explain why planes
can fly with symmetrical wings.
In fact, it's the angle of the wing
and the amount of air
it deflects down that matters.
Because according to
Newton's third law,
the air force downwards
results in an equal
and opposite force upwards,
onto the underside of the wing.
At the right speed and angle,
this is enough to lift
the plane into the air.
In flight, Victor X-ray's wings
are subjected to enormous forces.
Apprentice Lewis Robinson Hoare
has been scouring
the surface of this wing to find
any damage that may have occurred.
We found some damage
during inspections.
Which... The damage is around there,
where all that is pulled away
from the structure below it.
OK. So, the composite is starting
to come apart. Yeah.
'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 here.
So, it just runs in the family,
I suppose. Yeah.
Are they on shift
with you sometimes? No.
My dad's on the opposite
shift to me. OK.
Which is OK.
And my bampy is retired now.
But he used to work in here, as well.
Lewis's next job is
on Victor X-ray's flaps,
vital components which increase
the surface area of the wings,
allowing aircraft
to fly at slow speeds.
The only way
the crucial hydraulic and backup
electrical control systems
can be thoroughly checked
is to remove the flaps.
Lewis has to control this crane
with absolute precision.
The crane has been
set to 0.9 of a tonne,
which is the exact weight
of the flap they're removing.
That's so when the last guy
undoes the last bolt,
the wing doesn't drop to the floor
or fly to the ceiling.
Is she off? OK.
Slowly but surely,
the flap is removed from the wing,
with barely a millimetre
of movement up or down.
Let it go.
It's all yours, all right?
Look at his face, he's loving it.
During flight, air passes over
these flaps and wings
at hundreds of miles an hour.
That causes friction and
the build-up of static electricity.
To deal with that, there are small
attachments known as static wicks.
If you could see it, how would
that static look coming off here?
Does it just sort of fizzle out?
Literally that.
Visibility wise,
it is often very hard to see.
But you will still get sparking
that will occur. Really? Yes.
Sometimes in electric storms
and certainly in a lightning strike,
we will get these,
like, sacrificial...
They will take a bit of a battering.
On average, every aircraft
is hit by lightning once a year.
So, how does a plane deal
with this phenomenon?
This laboratory at the University
of Cardiff holds the answer.
Because this is one of
the few places in the world
where scientists,
led by Phil Leichauer,
have the technology to make
lightning of their own.
It might sound mad doing
these lightning tests to planes
and things, but absolutely everything
on an aircraft has to be certified
against all the threats
that 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 aluminium currently used.
So, why do planes
get hit by lightning?
The airplane, seeing as it's
in the sky, it's a huge metal object,
it induces
the lightning strikes itself
because it is the only thing there.
So, how do planes survive?
To find out, we're going to test
this aluminium model,
similar to our own 747.
Let's blow it. OK. You might have
the best job in the world.
Sometimes I think so. There's a lot
of paperwork, too, though.
Now, it is my chance to play God.
Basically, when I say fire,
it's very easy, just press fire.
And... fire.
So, you see?
The model aeroplane survived.
It did. It looks perfectly intact.
Everything and everyone
inside a plane is protected
by the aluminium fuselage,
which is a good conductor.
It allows the electricity to take
the path of least resistance,
along the fuselage and out again.
What would the passenger feel?
They might hear a loud thump,
but that is about it.
They shouldn't feel anything at all.
A graphic experiment illustrates
the dangers of using
'a non-conducting material,
in this case - plastic.' Fire.
Which is why all
new material combinations
are so extensively tested.
Back at the hangar, work to strip
back the 747 continues.
Today, engineers are about to reveal
one of the parts of the plane
that the public never sees.
The nose cone,
or ray dome as it is known,
shields the aircraft's
weather radar,
which needs to be checked
for corrosion.
And it works on the radar principle,
which is like a complicated eco.
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 is 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 he needs to take.
Victor X-ray is now a week
into its overhaul.
Next, its most valuable components
are about to be removed
for closer examination.
This is a big moment. They're taking
the engine off the wing.
These things cost
about £8,000,000 each.
The last thing you want
to have happen
is it come crashing to the floor.
As experienced as he is,
it's a nervous moment
for team leader Scott Croll.
I started as an apprentice
ten years ago
and I worked my way up
to team leader.
Even as a team leader now,
the amount of knowledge
and experience we need to learn
is incredible.
I think that is what keeps me going.
Generating over 60,000 pounds
of thrust, an engine exerts
enormous pressure on the mounts
that hold them in place.
It is crucial that engineers
remove the engines
so they can examine these fixtures
for signs of wear.
The pylon is that big bracket,
if you like, you can see,
which connects the engine
to the wing.
The engine to the pylon itself has
got eight bolts. Eight bolts? Wow.
Yeah, just for at the front
and four at the back.
And that's what the boys are undoing
now. They're undoing the four...
The eight bolts are crucial in
holding the engine in place,
so each one will be sent
to a laboratory and tested
for weaknesses.
There it is, yeah.
These all get sent away now, NDT'd
but we'll have a new set going on.
NDT - non-destructively tested.
Nice.
Maybe X-rays, ultrasound.
Of course, looking inside, yeah.
For the drop,
the seven-tonne engine is supported
in a sling attached to the crane.
It is an impressive operation
to make sure this is all rigged up
perfectly well,
so nothing can go wrong.
Yeah, you'll just be pushing it.
I mean, it's heavy to push or once
it's suspended it's quite free?
We're just supporting it.
Obviously, we try not to...
All the work is done by the crane.
All right? So we let that do it.
OK, clear, come down.
It's all happening. Take it down.
Scott and his team
slowly lower the engine,
making sure that all
of its pipes are disconnected.
To be honest,
it seems that the tension
has been transferred from the crane
into the engineers here.
You can see them all getting
more and more focused,
as it slackens off.
Going down again.
I don't think even steel toe caps would
withstand the force of one of these coming down.
Looking good,
we're almost there. That's it.
It's in? Yeah, we're good.
And that, ladies and gentlemen,
is a wrap.
So, at the end of the day, Scott, when you go home,
you've still got that job satisfaction with you?
Oh, definitely. Every day I go home
and I see my little girl
and she says,
"Daddy, how did your day
at work go today?"
And I say, "Honey,
today Daddy fitted an engine,
"not just any engine, an RB211."
Here we go.
Full-on impression now. Yeah.
When turning, the big fan
at the front sucks in air,
which is then compressed,
mixed with a mist of fuel
and ignited in a combustion chamber.
This produces a huge,
continuous blast of energy
in the form of hot gases.
These are directed out
the back of the engine,
producing some
of the engine's thrust.
The energy from the combustion
is also used to spin the front fan
faster, sucking more air in.
This air is directed around
the outside of the core and forced
out of the rear, producing
the rest of the engine's thrust.
The 24 precious titanium fan blades,
which provide the lion's share of the
aircraft's thrust can now be removed
and examined by Chris Thomas
and his team for damage.
Is it heavy? Can I...?
I mean, yeah, it is
not an inconsiderable weight,
but it's lighter
than I thought it would be.
'The titanium blades
are hollow to save weight.'
What exactly are you looking for
when doing those inspections?
OK, when I inspect the blade,
I inspect the surface of the blade,
the leading and trailing edge
of the blade for any erosion damage,
any chips or dents,
any 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 I've got
on the blade roots here.
You see the markings
on the blade roots. Yeah.
Each blade is serialized and
they're put in a specific location
to balance the hub.
So much like on a car wheel
when you have something done
with your car wheel,
it needs to be balanced
so when it's going round
at a high speed it's not causing
vibration. Exactly.
So, if you had to do work on one
blade, you might have to rebalance
the whole thing, not just
that blade. That's right. Wow.
Fully loaded, Victor X-ray needs
approximately 120,000 horse power
from its four engines
to get into the air.
That is similar to the power of
1,000 family cars pulling
this plane off the ground.
It's just in through this hole?
Just in through that hole.
This one here? That one.
And generating that level
of thrust is thirsty work.
Wow, this is pretty cramped.
I am crawling up into the bowels of
the 747 with engineer Phil Taylor.
He will spend over two weeks
looking for leaks
inside the aircraft's labyrinth
of fuel tanks.
So, this is the main tank.
We are in the centre wing tank,
which is situated
between the two wing sections.
Above you, is the cabin area,
with the cabin seating.
And you are in the forward midsection
of the aircraft, basically.
It holds 65,000 litres.
65,000 litres?! Certainly.
And is that all in this bit here?
No, this is one compartment
of six compartments going towards
the rear of the aircraft.
But there's more than one tank
on a plane. There's eight in all.
So how much fuel are you looking at,
across all of it?
The fuel quantity for
the whole aircraft is 216,000 litres.
That is massive! Your average-sized
car is what? I don't know, 60 litres?
Something like that.
So, approximately 3,500 cars
you could fill
with one jumbo-full of aviation fuel.
Victor X-ray is now two weeks
into its five-week overhaul
and so far, it is on schedule.
Engineers have completed over 5,000
of the 12,000 jobs that need
to be done before the 747 can be
classified as airworthy again.
In the cabin, the last remaining
floor and wall panels
need to be stripped,
along with the toilet module.
I'm good to go, Mick. Right, OK.
'I'd been roped in to help.'
It stinks, Mick.
I did tell you that.
Woo!
Now, Mick, on a lot of old trains,
I know that anything
that was produced
would just be dumped out
onto the track. And from that,
I think this urban myth
has developed that suggests
the same happens on planes.
Has that ever been true?
No. It ends up in the aft freights,
which is right down the back there.
All right.
We've got four tanks.
I last met Mick removing
all the seats
and I wondered if working
on aircraft for 19 years made him
feel more or less comfortable
about flying in one.
I love flying anyway, so it doesn't
bother me in the slightest.
I've always loved flying. The wife
doesn't like flying at all. No?
So, I mean, we'll go on holiday
to Lanzarote, something like that,
and we sit there
and the flaps all go down.
And she's gripping your hand.
"That the flaps going down."
And she'll go, "Shut up,
I don't want to know." Really? Yeah.
In an industry
where safety is paramount,
even a toilet is a highly
engineered piece of kit.
As an electrical component
that could cause a fire,
it has to undergo stringent tests
before it is passed fit to fly.
The tests are carried out at the company's
avionics facility outside Cardiff.
Here, the hundreds of electronic
gadgets used on a plane -
from navigational aid and
in-flight entertainment remotes
to toilet flushing systems -
are stripped,
tested and calibrated
by highly skilled engineers
like Martin Jenkins.
So, what happens when you go to
the toilet on an airplane, Martin?
When you actually finish
what you are doing,
you press your little button, which is
on the side of the toilet in the cabin.
It is.
There's a massive whooshing noise.
That is what we hear
on the actual rig.
We get a spray of water from the top
and a vacuum gets created in the bowl
and sucks it all away.
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 brought to the same
low pressure as outside,
effectively creating a vacuum.
This means that when a seal
on the toilet bowl is opened,
anything in the bowl is sucked away
into the pipes and waste tanks.
When you are flying, Martin, when
you go to the toilet in the air,
you must have any ear now
for what is the perfect flush.
That is a good point, actually,
because sometimes you might
get one that is working,
but not to the full capacity.
As you just said, you can pick it up as
you are listening to it, the actual flush.
You might not hear it, but I probably would.
And the other guys who work here as well.
Although it might seem over the top,
this level of testing
is not without good reason.
On a flight, electrical power
is at a premium, so even
the kettles are tested to make sure
they don't use too much electricity
and take it away
from a more important system.
Engineer Simon Aucock is currently
checking that these kettles
draw the correct current,
while taking the exact time to reach
the precise temperature
to make a perfect cup of tea.
We boil it 83 Celsius,
plus or minus 2 Celsius.
The board of tea tasters
have decided.
If you read a packet of, say,
PG Tips or whatever,
it never says boil a kettle.
It says hot but not boiling,
doesn't it? Yeah.
It's amazing, even
the kettles are over tested. Yeah.
When the 747 flew for the first time
over 40 years ago,
many of these devices being tested
here hadn't even been invented.
As technology has evolved,
manually controlled cables
and pulleys have been replaced
by computer-controlled
electronic signals,
transmitted by wires.
Beneath Victor X-ray's passenger
compartment is the cargo bay,
surrounded
by the 172 miles of wiring
that connect
all the plane's complex systems.
Just looking around,
there are miles and miles
of wiring here.
Many of these cables flow from the
pilot's controls to these vital computers,
currently being examined
by avionics engineer Nick Jordai.
The first 747s were designed
back in the '60s.
I presume those would not have
had any of this.
No. Their racks were built,
but it had totally different boxes.
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 role
is redundant because of these guys.
There's a thought,
a machine taking over man's job.
It is now just three weeks until
Victor X-ray is due to fly again.
As it's been stripped bare,
I've been able to see
how the aircraft's intricate
flight controls work,
delved inside its complex engines
and experienced the impressive mass
of its landing gear
as it was tested.
But could the plane's computers
I've just seen
control all of these
without a pilot?
I'm really interested to see
if it could actually fly itself.
I am heading down to London
to see pilot Doug Brown,
who flew Victor X-ray to Cardiff.
He is going to demonstrate
a 747's autopilot
in one of the airline's £8 million
flight simulators.
Right, I'll give you a chance to fly
the aeroplane manually for a little while.
As it...
As we are climbing away, yep.
Then what we'll do is put
the autopilot in, bring it round and
then we'll do an automatic approach
and an auto-land onto this runway. OK.
So, essentially there are three
planes to be thinking about.
One is pulling back to be able
to lift off vertically. Yep.
You've got the steering and the pedals to keep
yourself down the runway on that plane. Yep.
But then you've also got
this horizontal level. Indeed.
What does this control?
All four of the engines.
So, engines one to four,
forward thrust on there.
You can see the engines spool up.
Here we go.
That's actually there. OK.
Now I'm going to put full power on.
Now, we are coming up towards
the speed we ask you to pull back at.
Really? Oh, there we go. And rotate.
So, back on the control.
Don't turn the stick while rotating,
keep it in the middle.
That's nice. A bit further, I'm going
to select the landing gear up.
This is amazing. This is amazing.
Once up,
it's a tight 360-degree turn
so that we can simulate
an automatic landing.
Can you see the airfield there?
I can, straight ahead, yes.
We are going to let
the autopilot run through
and we'll go right through
to an auto-land.
Would autopilot be able
to do that itself?
The aircraft will land itself
if the pilot
has set it up properly
to do so. Fine.
The autopilot is now controlling
the 747's approach to the runway,
altering the pitch and direction
of the aircraft.
It can also control
the level of trust.
But the autopilot
cannot extend the wing flaps,
which slow the aircraft down,
or deploy the crucial landing gear.
Now it's going in, you see it? OK.
Only then can the 747 land itself.
Although the autopilot
cannot apply the brakes.
So, now you stick the reverse
thrust on? You do. OK.
And a little bit of brake.
That's it. Fantastic.
The 747 is a remarkably
intelligent machine,
but it still requires
skilled pilots to fly it.
And it is the high level of training
which is one of the reasons
why flying statistically
remains so safe.
Another reason is that the airline
industry has learned
valuable lessons in rare accidents
through an iconic component,
housed in the tail section
of a plane.
Here they are, two black boxes.
This on the right,
the data recorder,
records all the telemetry
of the flight.
And on the left,
is the voice recorder,
which records
all the pilots' voices.
The two black boxes are regularly
tested at BA's avionics lab,
where I met up
with engineer John Davies.
This is a black box,
but as you can see,
it is not actually black,
it is orange.
And that's because it is clearly
identified in any incident.
It is a big old tape recorder.
It is a big tape recorder.
That's what basically it is.
As you can see, as well,
the tape is actually surrounded
by two thermal packs, which are...
Spring-loaded, as well.
Spring-loaded, yeah.
With two thermal packs, which
are chalk impregnated with water.
So, in the event of a fire,
that water turns to steam,
keeps that tape at steam temperature.
OK. So it won't destroy the tape.
And what sort of temperature range
is it specified to?
Well, it should withstand
1,000 degrees C
over a 30-minute period of time.
That is where aviation fuel burns.
So the bit you're opening now,
inside there,
that is the precious cargo.
This is the part
we are interested in.
It will record the last 30 minutes
of any flight.
It may look archaic
and new airliners
have converted to digital,
solid-state data storage,
but tape still does the trick.
That could contain the most precious
of information
that will ultimately be fed back
to make sure it never happens again.
Exactly, yes.
Which it has many times. Yeah.
To comply with comprehensive
safety legislation,
all aircraft must work to strict
maintenance schedules,
including detailed tests every year
and a complete overhaul
every six years.
At 14 years of age,
Victor X-ray could still have
another ten years of flying ahead,
but there comes a time
when a 747 is just too costly
to keep maintaining.
Then, it is worth more as spare
parts than a complete aircraft.
This is part of your flaps,
part of the Krueger flaps.
Mark Gregory is the boss
of Air Salvage International.
We are obviously the largest
dismantling company in the UK,
in fact, in Europe.
'At Cotswold Airport,
in Gloucestershire,
'Mark and his team salvage
over 40 aircraft a year.'
These here,
can we have a closer look at these?
They are 747 in-board landing gears
we removed from a 747-400.
If it has done a huge amount
of landings,
then the value of that
is kind of dropping.
But I think this has done quite a lot
of landings. They're still not cheap.
Roughly how much, then? You're
probably looking at about $300,000
for a set of landing gears like this.
On a 747,
Mark will salvage up to 1,200 parts,
which will eventually be sold
to airlines around the world.
Precision electronics means
a second-hand coffee maker
could fetch up to £3,000.
Even a simple bowl for the toilet
could sell for as much as £500.
These are the front screens off
the 747,
they've got a very high value.
I would say probably around $30,000.
What, each? For each screen, yeah.
These ones, obviously, are heated.
There are heated elements
running through them.
I think they're gold heating elements
that go through them.
So, in here now, you've got...
They are very, very thick.
They are really thick screens.
They are laminated, as well.
You can just see
the elements in there. Yep.
A bit like your car heater
front screen, as well.
That hits home, there.
The value of the whole industry.
Yeah, it's massive,
absolutely massive.
80% of the salvage value of
an aircraft comes from its engines.
This is a 737 engine.
This probably has a resale value
of about 1.2 million, I suppose. Wow.
And going back, the bigger engines
at the back, are a bit more.
Once all the valuable parts
of the 747 have been removed,
what's left of the aluminium shell
will be tackled.
After almost 3 weeks,
Victor X-ray is now at a similar
stage of its overhaul.
18 days ago this plane was flying
passengers around the world
and today what it looks like inside is a
far cry from what it would have been then.
In this skeletal state, there
are signs of the 747's evolution.
We are right at the very front
of the aircraft
and above us is the flight deck.
And just looking around, even
in a plane as modern as the 747,
it is surprising to see how much
mechanical equipment there is,
as well as all the electronics.
Victor X-ray still uses the jumbo's
original cable and pulley system
to control some of the aircraft's
most important functions,
including the landing gear doors
and the rudder.
And then finally, right at the back
here, hopefully, I... Yep.
You see the cables heading off
through the cabin
and off to the rudder.
Keeping it mechanical,
keeping it simple.
Ah, the flight deck.
It looks a lot different
without the seats
and all the flight instruments.
The Cardiff team now have a tight
deadline to turn Victor X-ray
back into a fully working plane.
It is booked to go back into service
in just over two weeks,
on the same day the complex process
is due to finish.
But when a 747 has come to the end
of its working life,
like this one at Cotswold Airport,
there is no turning back for
Mark Gregory and his salvage team.
We've removed
over 130 tonnes of equipment
and all we're left with now is 100
tonnes of aircraft,
which has got very little value because
the only value that is there is the metal.
At this point, the final part
of the demolition process can begin.
So, we'll start, we'll take the tail
off first, chew the tail up.
And then we'll work forward.
Then the wings into the fuselage.
And then through the rest
of the body.
It doesn't take very long.
It's about three days to do a 747.
It really is all the guts
and the veins and everything
just being pulled out
of the whole machine.
Look at that.
Very soon, this 747 is nothing more
than a heap of scrap metal.
So, this is £200 million worth
of plane reduced to probably
the most expensive pile of scrap
I've ever seen in my life.
Only a few recognizable fragments
of the aircraft remain.
So, this is a leading-edge
and this is... Aluminium.
Well, there you go, you can see it
here. It's thin, but pretty...
It takes some battering there,
doesn't it?
Yeah, that's pretty durable.
As the wing moves back,
it doesn't need to be as strong,
so they make it out of this
lightweight stuff. There you go, yeah.
Engineering being led by nature,
isn't it? Honeycomb.
Look at this, though.
You can see the thickness.
It's so thin, it's like that.
Some 747 flight decks
are spared demolition
to be used as the shell
in the construction
of flight simulators.
Wow. This is a bit different.
It's like a relic, isn't it?
Look at that.
This is proper aviation history
here, how it all used to be.
These controls here are where
a flight engineer would have sat.
When you needed one. Obviously,
on Victor X-ray, that's gone now.
The remaining carcass of a 747
like this still has a recycling value
worth up to £35,000.
Although it is no longer pure enough
to be used again in aircraft construction,
as recycled aluminium,
it does get to live another day.
Once they'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 a new lease on life.
Last time. Last time, indeed.
It's heading out.
Tomorrow evening it's due
to head back into service.
There it is, Victor X-ray.
Completely different,
it's all back in.
It does smell new.
It does smell new.
The 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 parts,
including 11 brand-new toilets.
386 square metres of new carpet has been
fitted along with 285 refurbished seats.
And there are 14 brand-new
first class seats
for passengers paying upwards
of £5,000 a flight for the luxury.
Wow!
Oh, wow! Hey!
Ooh!
Oh.
It's mad to think it does
all this AND it flies.
In just over 24 hours' time,
these seats should be occupied
by paying customers
en route to South America.
So now,
for the first time in five weeks,
Victor X-ray is towed
from the hangar,
for the final critical tests that
need to be carried out to ensure
all the parts of the aircraft,
including its four engines, are working.
For Hugh Gibbs,
this is the only occasion
when an engineer gets
to power up a 747 for real.
So, will we be moving anywhere
when you put it up
to almost maximum thrust?
No, we've got the brakes on.
We can't do more than one engine
at full power at a time.
We have to do them one at a time.
Really?
So if you had all four,
we'd be taking off...
Well, taking off through
the middle of Cardiff airport. Yeah.
Request permission to carry out
a high-power ground run.
OK, going up on one and four.
The sensation of being here
right now is kind of what you get
when you hit turbulence midflight,
but, yeah,
we're here on the runway,
outside Cardiff airport.
It is just awesome,
the power of these things.
That was a brilliant,
fun experience for me.
From a technical perspective,
how did it go?
All went well,
we had no problems at all.
We got to high power
and it was lovely and smooth.
And it passed all the tests
that we need it to do.
And does running those engines up
to throttle like that
get any less exciting any time?
No, I've been doing it
for five years now, I still love it.
The following day, and on time,
Victor X-ray is ready to bid
farewell to Cardiff.
For the engineers,
this is the moment
when all the hard work pays off.
You know, job ownership,
especially if you have been on it
from start to finish
and you look back, "I've done that.
"It works."
When you see it barrelling down
the runway at 150 knots, you think,
"I did them bolts there."
You know,
I've been in the industry 20 years
and you'll never lose that pride
and that feeling inside
that you have been part of producing
that product and keeping it safe.
And, obviously, knowing that
when the aircraft returns
to Heathrow,
the customers then sit
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.
And for the engineering team
who have painstakingly stripped
the aircraft down
and built it back up again,
there is the satisfaction
of knowing it works.
Request permission to carry
out a high-power ground run.
With two decks carrying
over 500 passengers...
..and wings the width
of a football pitch...
..it was twice the size
of any airliner before.
The Boeing 747.
Affectionately known
as the jumbo jet.
OK, going up on one on four.
It's still
an engineering marvel.
It's just awesome,
the power of these things.
Now, as one 747, Victor X-ray, is
stripped to its bare bones and given
the biggest overhaul of its life,
there's a rare opportunity
to explore deep inside
its hidden features.
Wow! This is pretty cramped.
HE LAUGHS
That is massive!
A 200-strong team
of highly skilled engineers
take on the challenge
of checking over 20,000 parts
of this mighty aircraft.
If we don't take that out now, that
crack will just run and run and run.
Safety is paramount
in this finely balanced machine.
Every component, from its engines
to its kettles,
must be intricately examined
for damage.
The amount of knowledge and experience
we need to learn is just incredible.
I've got three children. They're very
proud that Mummy works on aeroplanes.
When you see it barrelling
down the runway at 150 knots,
you think, "I did them bolts up."
And we reveal
what happens to a jumbo
when 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 Wrigglesworth,
an electrical engineer
with a passion for big machines.
And this is Victor X-ray, the 747 that's about
to let us in to all its engineering secrets
This is the shortest flight
this plane will no doubt ever do.
'It's flying just 132 miles
from Heathrow to Cardiff Airport.'
And in a few moments' time,
this is where the 747 will arrive.
This enormous maintenance hangar.
All planes are regularly maintained,
but, 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.
This is the first time that
British Airways have allowed cameras
to film the complete
overhaul of one of their aircraft.
And we'll be there for every critical
stage in the engineering process.
This is a perfect opportunity for me and
Rob to see deep within the Boeing 747
and appreciate how amazing
these enormous machines are.
So there's the aircraft coming now.
Victor X-ray is the 1,172nd jumbo
to be manufactured by Boeing.
It was delivered to the airline
14 years ago
and has since flown 36 million miles,
equivalent to 1,500 times around the world.
Time for shut-down checks, please.
As Captain Doug Brown
shuts down the engines
and hands the plane over
to the Cardiff engineering team,
I've been offered a rare glimpse
inside the flight deck.
Hey, Doug, thank you for letting me in
here. This is, well, it's every boy's dream.
Absolutely. Every boy's dream. What
is the least used or pressed switch?
To be honest, very few of them
get used in flight.
When the 747-400 was designed
in 1989, it moved from being
a three-crew aeroplane with
a flight engineer's panel there,
which had thousands of buttons,
dials and gauges
and a full-time flight engineer,
to an automated two-crew aeroplane
with just two pilots.
So this is a simplified version?
In some ways, yes, but what's going
on behind the scenes is quite complex.
The actual heart of the aeroplane
is this flight-management computer.
And what that allows us
to do is to programme the aeroplane,
and the autopilot of the aircraft, with
a lot of the information before a flight
and as we go through the flight, we're
using the flight-management computer
to control the aircraft as much
as anything else on the aeroplane.
In the case of raw flying, what is the
minimum amount of controls you'd need?
CAPTAIN LAUGHS
In the absolute worst case,
you can fly the aircraft using
these three basic instruments.
Artificial horizon, air-speed
indicator and altimeter.
I don't know of any case where a 747 has
got down to flying on those instruments.
There is a huge amount of redundancy
built into the aeroplane.
Now, it's time for the £200 million worth of 747
to be carefully towed into the maintenance hangar,
where it will
live for the next five weeks.
I always wondered what it would be like
to be part of the ground crew at Heathrow.
I guess I'm getting
a bit of a feel for it now.
Handbrake on. Good to go.
Now, I can finally climb aboard
through what is currently
'the only way in - a maintenance
hatch in the belly of the plane.'
Welcome. Welcome aboard BA
flight 319. Thank you very much.
How was your flight? Excellent, thank
you. Cheers, mate. I'll give you a hand.
There we are. First class. It's pretty
spacious up here. I've been sat in seat 1A.
How's the view from up there?
I'll show you.
Ooh, that's the stuff! Absolutely, yeah, this is
1A. Reserved for the creme de la creme. Absolutely.
Which makes this seat what? Mick
Jagger's girlfriend. ROB LAUGHS
That'll do.
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.
Number one to us is safety.
Safety, safety, safety.
We are looking after people's lives
here. You can't make any mistakes.
You've got to be right all the time.
There are no garages at 36,000 feet.
Over the next five weeks,
engineers will work in teams
within different areas of the plane,
methodically searching
for any signs of damage
amongst Victor X-ray's six million
components.
One day we'll come into work
and we'll be doing the cabin,
which is very involved.
There's all sorts of different
disciplines of engineering
that the cabin holds and the next day
we could be on the wing.
Next day, we could be doing the engine runs at
the end of the check, which is pretty exciting.
This complex operation will take
over 30,000 working hours,
with the team having
to complete 12,000 separate jobs.
We pretty much run
seven days, 24 hours.
General manager Bill Kelly is in
charge of the maintenance facility.
How many years
would that be flying for?
This aircraft could fly
upwards of 25 years.
Really? Absolutely.
A very robust, very reliable,
strong aircraft.
When well maintained, as we do, they
will go on for many, many years yet.
Bill and his team
are under massive pressure
to finish
Victor X-ray's overhaul on time.
On the same day
it's due for completion,
the jumbo is scheduled to fly
passengers to South America.
Delays can cost millions of pounds.
You get something wrong
in maintenance where it delays you
by a day or two days,
it can really impact
the rest of the operation,
so you need to be on the ball.
Much of the work on Victor X-ray's
fuselage needs to be carried out at height.
The tip of its tailfin
is 20 metres above the ground,
so the aircraft will be
surrounded by this rig,
designed by these engineers
specifically to fit a 747.
It's not until you get up close
to the tailfin that you get
a sheer sense of scale
for the whole thing.
From the tip
to the ground is almost 70ft.
Looking back along
to the front of the aircraft
is a perspective
I've never seen before.
It's seriously impressive.
The first big engineering challenge
is to test one of the plane's
heftiest components -
the 18-wheeled landing gear.
Locked into the scaffolding rig,
the plane can't be propped
up like a car,
so its 180-tonne weight is supported
on three jumbo-sized jacks,
as the floor is lowered.
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.
Whoa, Jeez!
And here they come.
The landing gear weighs as much
as a double-decker bus,
so if it was simply allowed to fall down,
it could potentially cause serious damage.
Just getting the front one done.
So its mechanisms are designed
to offer enough resistance
to control the speed of deployment.
Now they've dropped, the guys
are giving them a push
to get them finally locked
into place.
If you're in the air and you have 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 them back into place.
What are these two plates
at the top here?
On the nose wheel,
you've got no brakes,
so when the aircraft takes off,
the wheels are spinning pretty fast.
So those are, basically,
big scuff plates.
The tyres will hit them and it just
slows them down and stops them.
OK, OK.
Inside Victor X-ray,
the cabin team are preparing
to strip out all the seats.
Melanie Geddes and Janice Nash are
among a growing number of female engineers
working at the facility.
You say you work for British Airways.
Everybody knows the brand,
and they assume you are cabin crew.
They don't naturally assume
that you work in engineering.
So it's something to be proud of.
I've got three children.
They're very proud that Mummy works
on aeroplanes and fixes aeroplanes.
So it's definitely one
to tell the kids.
You go home from work one day, your boyfriend
saying, "I've been stuck in the office."
You say, "I've been walking the wing
today." 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 can't help it. I wish I didn't.
Sometimes I put headphones on,
because you don't want to hear.
There's lots of noises, different noises,
that go on on an aircraft when its in flight.
You can't help it.
It's in our blood, if you like.
'Before everything disappears from
the cabin...' This is the CSD's office.
'..cabin-crew member Becky Wadsworth has agreed
to reveal some aspects of working on a 747.'
'She's spent over 10,000 hours
in the air
'on planes like Victor X-ray,
where space is extremely tight.'
These are the ovens.
These are the ovens. OK.
On an average flight, Becky and her
team will serve 300 passengers
over a tonne of food and drinks.
Is it true that when there are two pilots on
board, they have to have a different meal?
That's... Absolutely.
So should there be something wrong
with the chicken, for example,
you don't want them both
coming down ill with the same thing.
It's those little flashpoints. Who
decides first? It's normally the captain.
Captain first, co-pilot gets what's
left. That's it.
The captain will often say,
"You choose first."
Oh, what a lovely English tradition.
'A 14-hour flight
in cramped conditions is hard work.
'So today's 747 crews are able to
use a secret compartment...
'..above the passengers' heads.'
Up the stairs is the crew rest area.
Space is a premium up here! Absolutely!
Cosy.
Oh, wow. What's the longest flight
you do?
It's about 14 hours, from Singapore.
And in that time, how long would you
get to spend enjoying this luxury?
You'd get about
three-and-a-half-hours' rest.
I think what you also should have
is a little button
to call a member of the
public up to help! SHE LAUGHS
Back down in the cabin, the next
test is on a critical safety component
that airlines hope their passengers
will never see.
Go on.
HE LAUGHS
Whoa!
That was impressive.
Failure of the chutes
is not an option.
With lives 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 to open up
within a certain time limit... OK.
..which on this unit
is three seconds. OK.
So what's the process
behind inflating one of these?
The door will open
and then the cylinder charges
at 300 psi.
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-metre-long canister on an escape chute.
So, instead, when triggered, the canister
of compressed carbon dioxide and nitrogen
delivers only an initial boost.
The clever technique is that
these gases are forced through
a narrow gap, which causes them
to accelerate rapidly.
This acceleration creates a vacuum
that then sucks in enough ambient air
to inflate the entire slide
in three seconds.
Woo-hoo-hoo!
That was pretty quick.
Three seconds. We happy with that?
Yeah. Wow.
And look at it, I mean,
it's absolutely solid.
Testing the escape chute
is the easy part.
Now, like a parachute, the 30 square
metres of material must be folded
precisely back into its container,
measuring just half a square metre.
And, typically, that would take how
long? Six hours of hard labour. Wow.
It's as much an art as science.
It's all too easy
to take flying for granted.
As passengers, we're oblivious to the fact that
the enormous metal tube we're travelling in
is flying through the air
at close to 600 miles an hour.
And at a height similar to Everest -
an atmosphere unable
to support life.
Engineer Gavin Beverstock
is showing me
how Victor X-ray pumps air
from its engines into the cabin
to create an atmospheric pressure
similar to conditions on the ground.
A rise in altitude means
a decrease in pressure.
But, also, due to comfort for
passengers, it has to be maintained.
When we're on the ground,
we're at 14.7 psi
and, as you're rising through
the air, it reduces down.
Once you get below 10 psi,
it's not very comfortable,
you start having breathing problems.
The air's so thin, 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 6,000
and 8,000 feet, comparable
to the world's highest cities.
That means reduced oxygen
and is one of the reasons
we often feel tired on a flight.
Pressurising the cabin
can also cause metal fatigue,
because, as air is pumped in
and out of the aircraft,
its fuselage expands and contracts.
You can see the dimples
along the skin of the plane
which, when it's pressurised up
in the air, all gets smoothed out.
It's a pretty amazing
bit of engineering,
but this frequent flexing
of the fuselage can cause cracks.
It's one of the major reasons
why Victor X-ray is undergoing
this intensive operation.
In order to thoroughly examine every
inch of the airliner's internal shell,
engineers have to remove almost
every fixture and fitting inside the cabin.
Some 747s can take
over 500 passengers.
But airlines can use tracks in the
floor to choose their own seating plan.
On Victor X-ray, Mick Gregg and his
team must strip out 299 seats.
With the right allen key, do you steal
yourself a bit of extra leg room in-flight?
Would that...? No, it wouldn't!
Not unless you'd got a hammer
and drift with you!
You'd never get past security!
No, you wouldn't.
They are light. They're lighter
than a settee, aren't they? Yeah.
There you go, Tom, done.
Once removed, Victor X-ray's seats are sent
to the interiors workshop to be reupholstered
and put through their paces by
veteran seat tester Mark Jago.
Is it your job to sit
in this chair,
watch films, play a few games
and say, "Yeah, we're good" (?)
It's a terrible job,
but somebody's got to do it!
Back in the hangar,
work continues in the cabin.
All these side walls
are yet to come out.
All the dadoes on the bottom
are all to come out.
300 floor panels must be removed.
All the centre trough area there
gets reworked.
180 window protectors
and blinds taken out.
And 140 side wall panels
stripped off.
Here we go. This is the skeleton
of the plane, here. This is the...
Behind here, that's the framework.
Aluminium frame?
Yeah, it's all aluminium.
Wouldn't have steel, it's too heavy.
We want an aircraft
to be as light as possible.
And that insulation
is pretty vital, isn't it?
Because it is -50 degrees outside.
Yes, it is.
It gets to about -56 degrees
at around 30 to 35,000 feet.
And that's enough to protect
you from that -50? Yeah.
It's two days into the overhaul
and most of the first-class cabin
fittings have been removed.
The team can now begin
the painstaking task of searching
every inch of the internal frame
for the smallest of defects.
Lo and behold, we've found
a little crack down in the corner,
which we're going to put right.
Yeah, your favourite seat, 1A.
'Shift manager Paul Thomas
has discovered a minor crack
'in one of Victor X-ray's
floor supports.'
..which is right in the corner.
You can see the telltale,
and it runs right to the corner.
They normally emanate
from fastener holes or a rivet
and then run out.
Sharp edges, you know.
Yeah, well, you can see the line,
it's tracking.
So, yeah, we pretty much
got to replace that part now.
You visually inspect the whole
structure? Yeah, absolutely.
If we don't take that out now,
that crack will just run and run
and run and run.
So, we've found it now.
So, the floorboards will come up.
We'll de-rivet all this area.
Just for that?
Just for that small, little crack.
Yeah.
Reassuring, huh?
It is reassuring, because, I mean,
my car is, you know...
Call that a crack?
I'll show you cracks.
No lay-bys at 38,000 feet,
I'm afraid.
There are no lay-bys in the sky.
No, absolutely.
It's day four of the overhaul.
And work is beginning on Victor
X-Ray's largest components,
its wings.
From wingtip to wingtip,
we are looking at about 211 feet,
so a huge, huge wingspan.
That's about a football pitch then?
About a football pitch, yeah.
Overseeing the work on the aluminium
and carbon fibre wings
is shift manager Chris Morgan.
Obviously, they're very sturdy,
but there's quite a bit
of movement.
Yeah. You can see
there's movement there now.
You get a total displacement
up and down of about 32 feet.
That's because you don't want
a wing to be rigid.
They need to allow for turbulence,
for air flow.
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?
Most people have that question
answered with Bernoulli's theory.
Bernoulli's theory suggests that air
going over the top of the wing
has to travel further
than the air going underneath.
Because it has got to travel
further, it speeds up.
Because it speeds up, the air
particles spread out and diffuse.
This results in lower pressure
above the wing
than the pressure beneath.
That pressure difference literally
pushes the plane into the air.
But this doesn't explain why planes
can fly with symmetrical wings.
In fact, it's the angle of the wing
and the amount of air
it deflects down that matters.
Because according to
Newton's third law,
the air force downwards
results in an equal
and opposite force upwards,
onto the underside of the wing.
At the right speed and angle,
this is enough to lift
the plane into the air.
In flight, Victor X-ray's wings
are subjected to enormous forces.
Apprentice Lewis Robinson Hoare
has been scouring
the surface of this wing to find
any damage that may have occurred.
We found some damage
during inspections.
Which... The damage is around there,
where all that is pulled away
from the structure below it.
OK. So, the composite is starting
to come apart. Yeah.
'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 here.
So, it just runs in the family,
I suppose. Yeah.
Are they on shift
with you sometimes? No.
My dad's on the opposite
shift to me. OK.
Which is OK.
And my bampy is retired now.
But he used to work in here, as well.
Lewis's next job is
on Victor X-ray's flaps,
vital components which increase
the surface area of the wings,
allowing aircraft
to fly at slow speeds.
The only way
the crucial hydraulic and backup
electrical control systems
can be thoroughly checked
is to remove the flaps.
Lewis has to control this crane
with absolute precision.
The crane has been
set to 0.9 of a tonne,
which is the exact weight
of the flap they're removing.
That's so when the last guy
undoes the last bolt,
the wing doesn't drop to the floor
or fly to the ceiling.
Is she off? OK.
Slowly but surely,
the flap is removed from the wing,
with barely a millimetre
of movement up or down.
Let it go.
It's all yours, all right?
Look at his face, he's loving it.
During flight, air passes over
these flaps and wings
at hundreds of miles an hour.
That causes friction and
the build-up of static electricity.
To deal with that, there are small
attachments known as static wicks.
If you could see it, how would
that static look coming off here?
Does it just sort of fizzle out?
Literally that.
Visibility wise,
it is often very hard to see.
But you will still get sparking
that will occur. Really? Yes.
Sometimes in electric storms
and certainly in a lightning strike,
we will get these,
like, sacrificial...
They will take a bit of a battering.
On average, every aircraft
is hit by lightning once a year.
So, how does a plane deal
with this phenomenon?
This laboratory at the University
of Cardiff holds the answer.
Because this is one of
the few places in the world
where scientists,
led by Phil Leichauer,
have the technology to make
lightning of their own.
It might sound mad doing
these lightning tests to planes
and things, but absolutely everything
on an aircraft has to be certified
against all the threats
that 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 aluminium currently used.
So, why do planes
get hit by lightning?
The airplane, seeing as it's
in the sky, it's a huge metal object,
it induces
the lightning strikes itself
because it is the only thing there.
So, how do planes survive?
To find out, we're going to test
this aluminium model,
similar to our own 747.
Let's blow it. OK. You might have
the best job in the world.
Sometimes I think so. There's a lot
of paperwork, too, though.
Now, it is my chance to play God.
Basically, when I say fire,
it's very easy, just press fire.
And... fire.
So, you see?
The model aeroplane survived.
It did. It looks perfectly intact.
Everything and everyone
inside a plane is protected
by the aluminium fuselage,
which is a good conductor.
It allows the electricity to take
the path of least resistance,
along the fuselage and out again.
What would the passenger feel?
They might hear a loud thump,
but that is about it.
They shouldn't feel anything at all.
A graphic experiment illustrates
the dangers of using
'a non-conducting material,
in this case - plastic.' Fire.
Which is why all
new material combinations
are so extensively tested.
Back at the hangar, work to strip
back the 747 continues.
Today, engineers are about to reveal
one of the parts of the plane
that the public never sees.
The nose cone,
or ray dome as it is known,
shields the aircraft's
weather radar,
which needs to be checked
for corrosion.
And it works on the radar principle,
which is like a complicated eco.
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 is 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 he needs to take.
Victor X-ray is now a week
into its overhaul.
Next, its most valuable components
are about to be removed
for closer examination.
This is a big moment. They're taking
the engine off the wing.
These things cost
about £8,000,000 each.
The last thing you want
to have happen
is it come crashing to the floor.
As experienced as he is,
it's a nervous moment
for team leader Scott Croll.
I started as an apprentice
ten years ago
and I worked my way up
to team leader.
Even as a team leader now,
the amount of knowledge
and experience we need to learn
is incredible.
I think that is what keeps me going.
Generating over 60,000 pounds
of thrust, an engine exerts
enormous pressure on the mounts
that hold them in place.
It is crucial that engineers
remove the engines
so they can examine these fixtures
for signs of wear.
The pylon is that big bracket,
if you like, you can see,
which connects the engine
to the wing.
The engine to the pylon itself has
got eight bolts. Eight bolts? Wow.
Yeah, just for at the front
and four at the back.
And that's what the boys are undoing
now. They're undoing the four...
The eight bolts are crucial in
holding the engine in place,
so each one will be sent
to a laboratory and tested
for weaknesses.
There it is, yeah.
These all get sent away now, NDT'd
but we'll have a new set going on.
NDT - non-destructively tested.
Nice.
Maybe X-rays, ultrasound.
Of course, looking inside, yeah.
For the drop,
the seven-tonne engine is supported
in a sling attached to the crane.
It is an impressive operation
to make sure this is all rigged up
perfectly well,
so nothing can go wrong.
Yeah, you'll just be pushing it.
I mean, it's heavy to push or once
it's suspended it's quite free?
We're just supporting it.
Obviously, we try not to...
All the work is done by the crane.
All right? So we let that do it.
OK, clear, come down.
It's all happening. Take it down.
Scott and his team
slowly lower the engine,
making sure that all
of its pipes are disconnected.
To be honest,
it seems that the tension
has been transferred from the crane
into the engineers here.
You can see them all getting
more and more focused,
as it slackens off.
Going down again.
I don't think even steel toe caps would
withstand the force of one of these coming down.
Looking good,
we're almost there. That's it.
It's in? Yeah, we're good.
And that, ladies and gentlemen,
is a wrap.
So, at the end of the day, Scott, when you go home,
you've still got that job satisfaction with you?
Oh, definitely. Every day I go home
and I see my little girl
and she says,
"Daddy, how did your day
at work go today?"
And I say, "Honey,
today Daddy fitted an engine,
"not just any engine, an RB211."
Here we go.
Full-on impression now. Yeah.
When turning, the big fan
at the front sucks in air,
which is then compressed,
mixed with a mist of fuel
and ignited in a combustion chamber.
This produces a huge,
continuous blast of energy
in the form of hot gases.
These are directed out
the back of the engine,
producing some
of the engine's thrust.
The energy from the combustion
is also used to spin the front fan
faster, sucking more air in.
This air is directed around
the outside of the core and forced
out of the rear, producing
the rest of the engine's thrust.
The 24 precious titanium fan blades,
which provide the lion's share of the
aircraft's thrust can now be removed
and examined by Chris Thomas
and his team for damage.
Is it heavy? Can I...?
I mean, yeah, it is
not an inconsiderable weight,
but it's lighter
than I thought it would be.
'The titanium blades
are hollow to save weight.'
What exactly are you looking for
when doing those inspections?
OK, when I inspect the blade,
I inspect the surface of the blade,
the leading and trailing edge
of the blade for any erosion damage,
any chips or dents,
any 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 I've got
on the blade roots here.
You see the markings
on the blade roots. Yeah.
Each blade is serialized and
they're put in a specific location
to balance the hub.
So much like on a car wheel
when you have something done
with your car wheel,
it needs to be balanced
so when it's going round
at a high speed it's not causing
vibration. Exactly.
So, if you had to do work on one
blade, you might have to rebalance
the whole thing, not just
that blade. That's right. Wow.
Fully loaded, Victor X-ray needs
approximately 120,000 horse power
from its four engines
to get into the air.
That is similar to the power of
1,000 family cars pulling
this plane off the ground.
It's just in through this hole?
Just in through that hole.
This one here? That one.
And generating that level
of thrust is thirsty work.
Wow, this is pretty cramped.
I am crawling up into the bowels of
the 747 with engineer Phil Taylor.
He will spend over two weeks
looking for leaks
inside the aircraft's labyrinth
of fuel tanks.
So, this is the main tank.
We are in the centre wing tank,
which is situated
between the two wing sections.
Above you, is the cabin area,
with the cabin seating.
And you are in the forward midsection
of the aircraft, basically.
It holds 65,000 litres.
65,000 litres?! Certainly.
And is that all in this bit here?
No, this is one compartment
of six compartments going towards
the rear of the aircraft.
But there's more than one tank
on a plane. There's eight in all.
So how much fuel are you looking at,
across all of it?
The fuel quantity for
the whole aircraft is 216,000 litres.
That is massive! Your average-sized
car is what? I don't know, 60 litres?
Something like that.
So, approximately 3,500 cars
you could fill
with one jumbo-full of aviation fuel.
Victor X-ray is now two weeks
into its five-week overhaul
and so far, it is on schedule.
Engineers have completed over 5,000
of the 12,000 jobs that need
to be done before the 747 can be
classified as airworthy again.
In the cabin, the last remaining
floor and wall panels
need to be stripped,
along with the toilet module.
I'm good to go, Mick. Right, OK.
'I'd been roped in to help.'
It stinks, Mick.
I did tell you that.
Woo!
Now, Mick, on a lot of old trains,
I know that anything
that was produced
would just be dumped out
onto the track. And from that,
I think this urban myth
has developed that suggests
the same happens on planes.
Has that ever been true?
No. It ends up in the aft freights,
which is right down the back there.
All right.
We've got four tanks.
I last met Mick removing
all the seats
and I wondered if working
on aircraft for 19 years made him
feel more or less comfortable
about flying in one.
I love flying anyway, so it doesn't
bother me in the slightest.
I've always loved flying. The wife
doesn't like flying at all. No?
So, I mean, we'll go on holiday
to Lanzarote, something like that,
and we sit there
and the flaps all go down.
And she's gripping your hand.
"That the flaps going down."
And she'll go, "Shut up,
I don't want to know." Really? Yeah.
In an industry
where safety is paramount,
even a toilet is a highly
engineered piece of kit.
As an electrical component
that could cause a fire,
it has to undergo stringent tests
before it is passed fit to fly.
The tests are carried out at the company's
avionics facility outside Cardiff.
Here, the hundreds of electronic
gadgets used on a plane -
from navigational aid and
in-flight entertainment remotes
to toilet flushing systems -
are stripped,
tested and calibrated
by highly skilled engineers
like Martin Jenkins.
So, what happens when you go to
the toilet on an airplane, Martin?
When you actually finish
what you are doing,
you press your little button, which is
on the side of the toilet in the cabin.
It is.
There's a massive whooshing noise.
That is what we hear
on the actual rig.
We get a spray of water from the top
and a vacuum gets created in the bowl
and sucks it all away.
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 brought to the same
low pressure as outside,
effectively creating a vacuum.
This means that when a seal
on the toilet bowl is opened,
anything in the bowl is sucked away
into the pipes and waste tanks.
When you are flying, Martin, when
you go to the toilet in the air,
you must have any ear now
for what is the perfect flush.
That is a good point, actually,
because sometimes you might
get one that is working,
but not to the full capacity.
As you just said, you can pick it up as
you are listening to it, the actual flush.
You might not hear it, but I probably would.
And the other guys who work here as well.
Although it might seem over the top,
this level of testing
is not without good reason.
On a flight, electrical power
is at a premium, so even
the kettles are tested to make sure
they don't use too much electricity
and take it away
from a more important system.
Engineer Simon Aucock is currently
checking that these kettles
draw the correct current,
while taking the exact time to reach
the precise temperature
to make a perfect cup of tea.
We boil it 83 Celsius,
plus or minus 2 Celsius.
The board of tea tasters
have decided.
If you read a packet of, say,
PG Tips or whatever,
it never says boil a kettle.
It says hot but not boiling,
doesn't it? Yeah.
It's amazing, even
the kettles are over tested. Yeah.
When the 747 flew for the first time
over 40 years ago,
many of these devices being tested
here hadn't even been invented.
As technology has evolved,
manually controlled cables
and pulleys have been replaced
by computer-controlled
electronic signals,
transmitted by wires.
Beneath Victor X-ray's passenger
compartment is the cargo bay,
surrounded
by the 172 miles of wiring
that connect
all the plane's complex systems.
Just looking around,
there are miles and miles
of wiring here.
Many of these cables flow from the
pilot's controls to these vital computers,
currently being examined
by avionics engineer Nick Jordai.
The first 747s were designed
back in the '60s.
I presume those would not have
had any of this.
No. Their racks were built,
but it had totally different boxes.
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 role
is redundant because of these guys.
There's a thought,
a machine taking over man's job.
It is now just three weeks until
Victor X-ray is due to fly again.
As it's been stripped bare,
I've been able to see
how the aircraft's intricate
flight controls work,
delved inside its complex engines
and experienced the impressive mass
of its landing gear
as it was tested.
But could the plane's computers
I've just seen
control all of these
without a pilot?
I'm really interested to see
if it could actually fly itself.
I am heading down to London
to see pilot Doug Brown,
who flew Victor X-ray to Cardiff.
He is going to demonstrate
a 747's autopilot
in one of the airline's £8 million
flight simulators.
Right, I'll give you a chance to fly
the aeroplane manually for a little while.
As it...
As we are climbing away, yep.
Then what we'll do is put
the autopilot in, bring it round and
then we'll do an automatic approach
and an auto-land onto this runway. OK.
So, essentially there are three
planes to be thinking about.
One is pulling back to be able
to lift off vertically. Yep.
You've got the steering and the pedals to keep
yourself down the runway on that plane. Yep.
But then you've also got
this horizontal level. Indeed.
What does this control?
All four of the engines.
So, engines one to four,
forward thrust on there.
You can see the engines spool up.
Here we go.
That's actually there. OK.
Now I'm going to put full power on.
Now, we are coming up towards
the speed we ask you to pull back at.
Really? Oh, there we go. And rotate.
So, back on the control.
Don't turn the stick while rotating,
keep it in the middle.
That's nice. A bit further, I'm going
to select the landing gear up.
This is amazing. This is amazing.
Once up,
it's a tight 360-degree turn
so that we can simulate
an automatic landing.
Can you see the airfield there?
I can, straight ahead, yes.
We are going to let
the autopilot run through
and we'll go right through
to an auto-land.
Would autopilot be able
to do that itself?
The aircraft will land itself
if the pilot
has set it up properly
to do so. Fine.
The autopilot is now controlling
the 747's approach to the runway,
altering the pitch and direction
of the aircraft.
It can also control
the level of trust.
But the autopilot
cannot extend the wing flaps,
which slow the aircraft down,
or deploy the crucial landing gear.
Now it's going in, you see it? OK.
Only then can the 747 land itself.
Although the autopilot
cannot apply the brakes.
So, now you stick the reverse
thrust on? You do. OK.
And a little bit of brake.
That's it. Fantastic.
The 747 is a remarkably
intelligent machine,
but it still requires
skilled pilots to fly it.
And it is the high level of training
which is one of the reasons
why flying statistically
remains so safe.
Another reason is that the airline
industry has learned
valuable lessons in rare accidents
through an iconic component,
housed in the tail section
of a plane.
Here they are, two black boxes.
This on the right,
the data recorder,
records all the telemetry
of the flight.
And on the left,
is the voice recorder,
which records
all the pilots' voices.
The two black boxes are regularly
tested at BA's avionics lab,
where I met up
with engineer John Davies.
This is a black box,
but as you can see,
it is not actually black,
it is orange.
And that's because it is clearly
identified in any incident.
It is a big old tape recorder.
It is a big tape recorder.
That's what basically it is.
As you can see, as well,
the tape is actually surrounded
by two thermal packs, which are...
Spring-loaded, as well.
Spring-loaded, yeah.
With two thermal packs, which
are chalk impregnated with water.
So, in the event of a fire,
that water turns to steam,
keeps that tape at steam temperature.
OK. So it won't destroy the tape.
And what sort of temperature range
is it specified to?
Well, it should withstand
1,000 degrees C
over a 30-minute period of time.
That is where aviation fuel burns.
So the bit you're opening now,
inside there,
that is the precious cargo.
This is the part
we are interested in.
It will record the last 30 minutes
of any flight.
It may look archaic
and new airliners
have converted to digital,
solid-state data storage,
but tape still does the trick.
That could contain the most precious
of information
that will ultimately be fed back
to make sure it never happens again.
Exactly, yes.
Which it has many times. Yeah.
To comply with comprehensive
safety legislation,
all aircraft must work to strict
maintenance schedules,
including detailed tests every year
and a complete overhaul
every six years.
At 14 years of age,
Victor X-ray could still have
another ten years of flying ahead,
but there comes a time
when a 747 is just too costly
to keep maintaining.
Then, it is worth more as spare
parts than a complete aircraft.
This is part of your flaps,
part of the Krueger flaps.
Mark Gregory is the boss
of Air Salvage International.
We are obviously the largest
dismantling company in the UK,
in fact, in Europe.
'At Cotswold Airport,
in Gloucestershire,
'Mark and his team salvage
over 40 aircraft a year.'
These here,
can we have a closer look at these?
They are 747 in-board landing gears
we removed from a 747-400.
If it has done a huge amount
of landings,
then the value of that
is kind of dropping.
But I think this has done quite a lot
of landings. They're still not cheap.
Roughly how much, then? You're
probably looking at about $300,000
for a set of landing gears like this.
On a 747,
Mark will salvage up to 1,200 parts,
which will eventually be sold
to airlines around the world.
Precision electronics means
a second-hand coffee maker
could fetch up to £3,000.
Even a simple bowl for the toilet
could sell for as much as £500.
These are the front screens off
the 747,
they've got a very high value.
I would say probably around $30,000.
What, each? For each screen, yeah.
These ones, obviously, are heated.
There are heated elements
running through them.
I think they're gold heating elements
that go through them.
So, in here now, you've got...
They are very, very thick.
They are really thick screens.
They are laminated, as well.
You can just see
the elements in there. Yep.
A bit like your car heater
front screen, as well.
That hits home, there.
The value of the whole industry.
Yeah, it's massive,
absolutely massive.
80% of the salvage value of
an aircraft comes from its engines.
This is a 737 engine.
This probably has a resale value
of about 1.2 million, I suppose. Wow.
And going back, the bigger engines
at the back, are a bit more.
Once all the valuable parts
of the 747 have been removed,
what's left of the aluminium shell
will be tackled.
After almost 3 weeks,
Victor X-ray is now at a similar
stage of its overhaul.
18 days ago this plane was flying
passengers around the world
and today what it looks like inside is a
far cry from what it would have been then.
In this skeletal state, there
are signs of the 747's evolution.
We are right at the very front
of the aircraft
and above us is the flight deck.
And just looking around, even
in a plane as modern as the 747,
it is surprising to see how much
mechanical equipment there is,
as well as all the electronics.
Victor X-ray still uses the jumbo's
original cable and pulley system
to control some of the aircraft's
most important functions,
including the landing gear doors
and the rudder.
And then finally, right at the back
here, hopefully, I... Yep.
You see the cables heading off
through the cabin
and off to the rudder.
Keeping it mechanical,
keeping it simple.
Ah, the flight deck.
It looks a lot different
without the seats
and all the flight instruments.
The Cardiff team now have a tight
deadline to turn Victor X-ray
back into a fully working plane.
It is booked to go back into service
in just over two weeks,
on the same day the complex process
is due to finish.
But when a 747 has come to the end
of its working life,
like this one at Cotswold Airport,
there is no turning back for
Mark Gregory and his salvage team.
We've removed
over 130 tonnes of equipment
and all we're left with now is 100
tonnes of aircraft,
which has got very little value because
the only value that is there is the metal.
At this point, the final part
of the demolition process can begin.
So, we'll start, we'll take the tail
off first, chew the tail up.
And then we'll work forward.
Then the wings into the fuselage.
And then through the rest
of the body.
It doesn't take very long.
It's about three days to do a 747.
It really is all the guts
and the veins and everything
just being pulled out
of the whole machine.
Look at that.
Very soon, this 747 is nothing more
than a heap of scrap metal.
So, this is £200 million worth
of plane reduced to probably
the most expensive pile of scrap
I've ever seen in my life.
Only a few recognizable fragments
of the aircraft remain.
So, this is a leading-edge
and this is... Aluminium.
Well, there you go, you can see it
here. It's thin, but pretty...
It takes some battering there,
doesn't it?
Yeah, that's pretty durable.
As the wing moves back,
it doesn't need to be as strong,
so they make it out of this
lightweight stuff. There you go, yeah.
Engineering being led by nature,
isn't it? Honeycomb.
Look at this, though.
You can see the thickness.
It's so thin, it's like that.
Some 747 flight decks
are spared demolition
to be used as the shell
in the construction
of flight simulators.
Wow. This is a bit different.
It's like a relic, isn't it?
Look at that.
This is proper aviation history
here, how it all used to be.
These controls here are where
a flight engineer would have sat.
When you needed one. Obviously,
on Victor X-ray, that's gone now.
The remaining carcass of a 747
like this still has a recycling value
worth up to £35,000.
Although it is no longer pure enough
to be used again in aircraft construction,
as recycled aluminium,
it does get to live another day.
Once they'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 a new lease on life.
Last time. Last time, indeed.
It's heading out.
Tomorrow evening it's due
to head back into service.
There it is, Victor X-ray.
Completely different,
it's all back in.
It does smell new.
It does smell new.
The 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 parts,
including 11 brand-new toilets.
386 square metres of new carpet has been
fitted along with 285 refurbished seats.
And there are 14 brand-new
first class seats
for passengers paying upwards
of £5,000 a flight for the luxury.
Wow!
Oh, wow! Hey!
Ooh!
Oh.
It's mad to think it does
all this AND it flies.
In just over 24 hours' time,
these seats should be occupied
by paying customers
en route to South America.
So now,
for the first time in five weeks,
Victor X-ray is towed
from the hangar,
for the final critical tests that
need to be carried out to ensure
all the parts of the aircraft,
including its four engines, are working.
For Hugh Gibbs,
this is the only occasion
when an engineer gets
to power up a 747 for real.
So, will we be moving anywhere
when you put it up
to almost maximum thrust?
No, we've got the brakes on.
We can't do more than one engine
at full power at a time.
We have to do them one at a time.
Really?
So if you had all four,
we'd be taking off...
Well, taking off through
the middle of Cardiff airport. Yeah.
Request permission to carry out
a high-power ground run.
OK, going up on one and four.
The sensation of being here
right now is kind of what you get
when you hit turbulence midflight,
but, yeah,
we're here on the runway,
outside Cardiff airport.
It is just awesome,
the power of these things.
That was a brilliant,
fun experience for me.
From a technical perspective,
how did it go?
All went well,
we had no problems at all.
We got to high power
and it was lovely and smooth.
And it passed all the tests
that we need it to do.
And does running those engines up
to throttle like that
get any less exciting any time?
No, I've been doing it
for five years now, I still love it.
The following day, and on time,
Victor X-ray is ready to bid
farewell to Cardiff.
For the engineers,
this is the moment
when all the hard work pays off.
You know, job ownership,
especially if you have been on it
from start to finish
and you look back, "I've done that.
"It works."
When you see it barrelling down
the runway at 150 knots, you think,
"I did them bolts there."
You know,
I've been in the industry 20 years
and you'll never lose that pride
and that feeling inside
that you have been part of producing
that product and keeping it safe.
And, obviously, knowing that
when the aircraft returns
to Heathrow,
the customers then sit
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.
And for the engineering team
who have painstakingly stripped
the aircraft down
and built it back up again,
there is the satisfaction
of knowing it works.