Ultimate Airport Dubai (2013) s02e09 Episode Script
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NARRATOR: In this episode.
GUY: Thrust set.
NARRATOR: A rookie pilot takes
more than 400 lives in his hands.
GUY: Can you feel
how sensitive it is?
DAVID: Yeah it is, a lot
different to the sim.
NARRATOR: An A380 gets
a pimped up paint job.
PETER: Our customers
deserve the best.
NARRATOR: And the $1 billion runway
overhaul goes right down to the wire.
SUZANNE: We have a national
obligation to finish on time.
If we didn't, I just hate to
think what is going to happen.
NARRATOR: Dubai
International Airport,
the busiest global hub on the planet
and aiming to stay there.
FRANCOIS: Cleared for takeoff.
NARRATOR: But perfection
is never easy.
JUMAH: It's not finished,
it's supposed to be finished.
NARRATOR: More
planes to service.
MAN: Can we open the
number three engine?
NARRATOR: More
situations to deal with.
MEL: What do you
mean live snakes?
NARRATOR: More
smugglers to stop.
HASSAN: This is
the heroin here.
NARRATOR: And massive
engineering projects to complete on time.
It's non-stop, 24/7.
It's the job of 90,000
staff from all over the world,
to make this the ultimate airport.
Aviation makes up 25% of Dubai's economy
and is set to become even more important in
the years to come, so at its biggest airport,
investment for the future is critical,
even if the costs are huge.
Last year saw the $3.2 billion
construction of the world's
first dedicated A380 terminal.
JUMAH: Failure is
not an option for us here, this is Dubai.
NARRATOR: Capacity was increased
from 60 to 75 million passengers,
but in the cutthroat world of aviation,
resting on your laurels is commercial suicide.
So this year's supersized construction
project is a billion-dollar overhaul
of both runways, one after the other.
It's been running now for 79 days.
Operating on a single runway has
slashed capacity and lost the airport
$272 million in revenue already.
Airport CEO Paul Griffiths,
is hoping short-term pain
will lead to long-term gain.
PAUL: It might seem a huge
billion-dollar investment, but clearly,
if we can keep putting 60, 70,
80 and ultimately 100 million
passengers through a year,
we're gonna get that money back.
NARRATOR: Interrupting operations to
increase future capacity is a big gamble.
The airport's reputation and that of its
engineering Chief, Suzanne Al-Anani,
is on the line.
SUZANNE: The bar is getting
higher and higher and higher, so,
it's always testing you
and your capabilities.
NARRATOR: With each day of single runway
operation losing the airport $3.5 million,
this 80-day project must finish on time.
And today is day 80, crunch time.
Planes should be flying here on
the northern runway in just five hours.
CHRIS: It's critical that we
check everything is as it should be.
NARRATOR: To open, it must
pass an inspection by the GCAA,
the regulator responsible for
the Dubai Aviation Sector.
But before the airport lets the GCAA in,
they're going to check
over every inch themselves.
CHRIS: Well this is the last line of
defense, making sure that everything is now
tightened down, everything's been
cleared, so we shouldn't find any items
loose on the runway at all.
NARRATOR: Chris Garton is Senior
Vice President of Airport Operations.
54 days ago, missing light fittings delayed
the southern runway reopening by 24 hours.
They made the time up, but with
each day's overrun costing millions,
Chris will be inspecting
each fitting thoroughly.
CHRIS: It's a brand new lighting system,
our first LED-based lighting system,
so I'm saving a fortune
on the electricity bill.
NARRATOR: The 5,000 new LED lights
replace the old tungsten based system,
they use 90% less energy, last
30,000 hours and sit flush to the runway.
CHRIS: Well these are lower profile fittings,
so anybody taking off on this runway
isn't gonna hear that nose wheel of
the airplane doing the bump, bump,
bump as it goes down the runway, and
obviously, we'll see how the surface copes with
what will be over
1,000, probably 1,100 movements a day, so,
it's gonna be a busy old runway.
But we ought to be able to get something
like a 20-year life out of this runway.
That's gonna serve us
well into the future.
NARRATOR: Up in Air Traffic Control, Phil
Marques must wait for Airside Operations to
declare the runway safe before
he can get his hands on it.
PHIL: Up here, we're all just ready, kind
of anxious to get back to working with two
runways after 80 days.
NARRATOR: Dubai International is staking
its reputation on returning to a two runway,
full capacity operation today.
PHIL: For whatever reason, that runway wasn't
back into operation, we'd be in trouble,
because, we're all of a sudden getting demand
for two runways when we don't have two.
NARRATOR: Not opening
would be a costly setback for the airport
and a nightmare for passengers.
PHIL (off-screen): The biggest risks would
be airlines that wouldn't probably be
fueled up for extensive delays in
Dubai, so that would result in diversions,
passengers going to different airports
and then trying to get those flights
back into Dubai.
NARRATOR: But outside on a
taxiway, there's a problem.
2.5 miles of brand new asphalt has
been laid and with just hours to go,
a fresh hole is being cut to fix
two lights that won't switch on,
and with the stakes
so high, Engineering CEO Suzanne Al-Anani,
has been called to the site.
SUZANNE (off-screen):
I'm really annoyed.
I honestly thought that, it's been going
very smoothly the last few days, you know,
there must be a hiccup somewhere.
I rang up Yousuf,
"How is everything?"
He said, "Ah we have a problem,
better come here to see what's going on."
NARRATOR: For Suzanne's
Project Manager, Yousuf Pirzada,
it's the last thing he
needs on opening day.
YOUSUF: If we are unable to
open, the criticality of this project
for the airport and for the aviation
sector in Dubai is very, very high.
You know, a lot of people will
have problem in keeping their job
including myself.
NARRATOR: Over on the runway,
Chris has found another faulty light.
CHRIS: Have you got
a bolt for a fitting?
NARRATOR: Around 20,000 bolts have been
used to secure the new light fittings to the
asphalt, but one bolt is missing.
CHRIS (off-screen): The very worst
case scenario is the fitting could come
out of the ground and then be blown by
the jet blast and that could damage tires.
NARRATOR: Tire damage can be fatal, it
brought down an Air France Concorde in 2000,
after chunks of tire, shredded by metal
debris on a runway, ruptured a fuel tank.
CHRIS: This is a concern for me
because we shouldn't have found this.
NARRATOR: With the
runway scheduled to reopen in four hours,
Chris is forced to face the unthinkable.
CHRIS: We really have to make sure
all of these things are absolutely right,
otherwise we won't be opening.
NARRATOR: Dubai's runway upgrade is vital,
because the largest fleet of A380s on the
planet is based here.
Emirates flies 50 of
them already and has 90 more on order.
But a global shortage of pilots means
they need to train around 400 new ones
every year, to meet future demand.
MAN (over radio):
30, 20, retard.
NARRATOR: The latest recruit, Dave Storey,
has spent more than 28 hours in the simulator
and tested with emergency
scenarios from engine failure.
DAVID: Engine problem, rotate.
NARRATOR: To a
smoke-filled cockpit.
DAVID: Oh yeah,
smoke fumes. Land ASAP.
NARRATOR: Today
it's the real deal.
Dave will fly his first A380,
filled with 416 passengers,
to Munich, Germany.
DAVID: There's a lot of anticipation
for today, three months almost I'm in the
classroom, lots of simulators.
I've been looking forward to this
day for ten weeks now, it's finally here.
It's the first time with passengers
sitting behind me, but hopefully,
if the plane is exactly
like it is in the simulator,
they won't know that
I'm on my first flight.
Fuel quantity.
GUY: Check.
DAVID: Take off.
NARRATOR: The $10 million
simulators are great for training,
but the reality of the
238-foot-long super jet is very different.
DAVID: On the ground level, I looked up, I
can't believe how wide the wingspan is and the
engines are about the same size as
the entire airplane that I used to fly.
NARRATOR: The plane is 261
feet wingtip to wingtip,
with four GP7200 engines.
DAVID: It's ten times the size of
the airplane that I used to fly, so,
I imagine a mistake's gonna be a little
bit more noticeable, so definitely a very
intimidating airplane.
MEL: Morning, how are you?
NARRATOR: Inside the terminal, Emirates
have put one of their most experienced
Airport Services Managers
in charge of getting the
passengers onto Dave's maiden flight.
MEL: Hi. All ready?
NARRATOR: Mel Sabharwal is at gate A12,
to make sure nothing holds up departure.
MEL: My main concern today is, I
know we've got a new pilot onboard, so,
I don't wanna add to any additional stress
that he may be having at this stage.
So hopefully, all our boarding activities
will be finished at minus 20 and I can then go
onboard and say
"Hey, we're ready to go."
NARRATOR: While the airport is on single
runway operation, it's even more critical than
usual that flights push back on time,
but with 50 minutes until gate closure,
there's a late request
from two business class frequent flyers.
MAN: We have two upgrades.
MEL: You've got upgrades?
MAN: Yeah. MEL: From which class?
MAN: I need two
first class, yes.
MEL: Have you got meals?
MAN: We need to
request for the two meal.
MEL (off-screen): Well
you don't have meals.
MAN: No.
MEL: Okay I'll
try, can't promise.
You haven't done the upgrade yet right?
MAN: No, it's still
there under request.
NARRATOR: Mel can't hold up departure, but
she must do all she can to reward loyal and
highly valuable customers who want to use
their frequent flyer points for an upgrade.
MEL: Mate, I need two first class
meals on EK49, is that gonna be possible?
Yeah, it's an hour before departure.
(radio chatter)
MEL: Okay, let me know, 'cause I won't
actually upgrade unless we've got the meals.
Don't upgrade them
yet until we know, yeah?
MAN (off-screen): Alright,
we'll keep it on hold.
MEL: Yeah. 'Cause it's
gonna take some time.
It's a little bit complicated in the first
class cabin because we don't just cater
for one meal, we normally need to have at
least four meals ready on hand, so a big ask.
GUY: Let's do a before
start checklist to the line please. Check.
NARRATOR: In 45
minutes, trainee A380 pilot, Dave Storey,
must push back on his inaugural flight.
DAVID: Fuel quantity.
GUY (off-screen): Check.
DAVID (off-screen):
Takeoff data. GUY (off-screen): Set.
NARRATOR: But first, he must work his way
through the lengthy pre-flight checklist.
DAVID (off-screen): Main
fuel at destination is 10.4.
GUY (off-screen): Check.
DAVID (off-screen): Most important thing
today, I think, is to get the aircraft out,
the time pressures on
the ground are very, very noticeable.
NARRATOR: But inside the terminal, Dave's
flight is beginning to unravel for Mel.
40 minutes before the gate closes, there's
no sign of the first class meals for the two
business class passengers
who've asked for an upgrade.
MEL: I'm still waiting
for news for those first class meals,
I can't action any upgrades
until I've got confirmation.
No news yet? No?
NARRATOR: And 300 of the 416
passengers haven't shown up yet.
MEL: I don't see much activity at the gate,
so a little bit worrying at the moment.
NARRATOR: Gate A12
may be unusually quiet,
but over in Emirates Flight Catering,
it's a hive of activity.
JACKLINE: Yes.
Which flight is that?
NARRATOR: The Munich flight is just
one of the 360 flights that require the
145,000 meals prepared here each day.
JACKLINE (off-screen): We're
approaching about 9,000 catering staff,
serving all the
aircrafts at Dubai Airport.
It's the biggest
catering unit in the world.
NARRATOR: Duty Officer Jackline Muthoni
is in charge of last minute changes right
now, her priority is
to get Mel her extra first class meals,
which have to be freshly prepared.
Emirates passengers
consume 2.7 tons of caviar
and 113,000 bottles of
Dom Pérignon every year.
Today's first class passengers will
choose dishes from a seven course menu,
including a comfit of duck starter.
JACKLINE: How long will
it take to prepare?
WOMAN: Five minutes,
seven minutes.
JACKLINE: Five minutes. Okay,
can you make it four minutes?
We are pressed for time.
NARRATOR: The request for extra
meals has come at the worst time.
JACKLINE: Between 7:00 in
the morning to about 10:30,
we are dispatching about 102 flights.
NARRATOR: 1,250 tons of
chicken and 2.2 million eggs
go into the 53 million meals
that are prepared here each year.
JACKLINE: Hello, we need drivers and
bus, we have some urgent top up to send.
NARRATOR: The meals for the Munich flight
have been rushed to the dispatch point,
but getting them to the
plane has hit a setback.
JACKLINE: We have vans
sitting here but no drivers for the vans,
so we need to get the drivers.
It is top urgent now.
NARRATOR: Back in the terminal, it isn't
just the first class upgrade meals that
are seriously late for the Munich flight.
MEL: Aziz, we're still missing around
21 passengers, economy, for Munich.
NARRATOR: The gate
closes in 15 minutes.
MEL: There's no activity
at the gate, where are they?
NARRATOR: With the airport still on single
runway operation and a first timer in
the cockpit, delaying
departure is not an option.
MEL: It's looking a little
bit crucial at the moment.
NARRATOR: The upgraded northern runway
is scheduled to reopen in three hours,
but things aren't going to plan.
CHRIS: There's no way we can open
the runway with this in this condition.
NARRATOR: Chris Garton has discovered
that one of around 20,000 bolts,
that secure the new lights
to the runway, is missing.
CHRIS (off-screen): That's
completely gone in the base hasn't it?
The base of the fitting is made from aluminum,
yeah, so each of these holes has got a
steel grip within it and this one has
got displaced, which is why they've been
unable to get a bolt in it.
NARRATOR: It's worse than they thought,
they can't just screw in a new one.
CHRIS: It's the base
that's the problem.
If we have to core the base out, that's a
two hour job, because the material that
holds the base takes two hours to set,
so that's getting a bit desperately tight.
NARRATOR: 5,000 new LED lights
have been installed on the runway,
but one $12 bolt is
now putting the 11:00 AM deadline at risk.
CHRIS: What the guys are trying to
do is take the thread out and they can
replace it with a, with a
special spring that goes in.
And it looks like it is coming, slowly.
Mind your fingers.
You can see the steel coming out now.
NARRATOR: With people across
the airport clambering for an update,
Chris and his team manage a fix.
The irony of the situation is not lost.
CHRIS: So this is officially the first
piece of maintenance on a brand new runway,
this is the insert
that the guys have fitted into the base,
so with a bit of luck now, we'll get this
torqued down and another ten minute or so,
all finished, all done
and we're up and running.
That's the major one I was worried about.
NARRATOR: With
$272 million of revenue lost
during 80 days of single runway operation,
the northern runway must open today.
PHIL: Those two runways are what
brings the airport and Dubai money.
NARRATOR: As part of the upgrades, extra
exit taxiways have been built so planes can
get off the runway more
quickly after they land.
PHIL: What that does is reduces our runway
occupancy time and the lower your runway
occupancy time is, the more airplanes
you can be putting on that runway.
NARRATOR: And the new
taxiways are already paying dividends on
the newly upgraded southern runway.
PHIL: We've already seen in the
first month, with the southern runways,
by using one of the new exits, we've
managed to shave ten seconds off our runway
occupancy time, which is huge.
If you do that over an hour, that's
an extra two or three movements,
which just brings Dubai that much
more money, and we're hoping that,
with the northern
runway, we have the same.
NARRATOR: The taxiways may
be key to future growth, but right now,
Suzanne and Yousuf's taxiway is threatening
to grind the reopening to a halt.
Despite 650 miles of cabling
used in the runway upgrades,
two of the lights weren't wired up.
YOUSUF: What we found that
the wire were not connected.
So we have to cut the pavement
to rewire the whole thing.
We end up doing almost
100 metre of socketing
to put the new cable.
NARRATOR: Less than three hours until
opening and now there's a real chance the
11:00 AM
deadline won't be met.
YOUSUF: We are doing our best.
But this has to be
done before it can open.
NARRATOR: All eyes are on the engineering
team as they race to get these critical
safety lights working.
SUZANNE: We have a national obligation
to finish on time, to have this opened,
operational, up and running, and if we
didn't meet it, I just hate to think what is
going to happen.
NARRATOR: At Flight Catering, Jackline's
trying to get her last minute first class meal
requests out to the plane.
JACKLINE: Now, can we load very quickly
because we don't have a lot of time.
NARRATOR: She's
located a van driver.
JACKLINE: Okay,
the driver is ready.
NARRATOR: But she's
cutting it fine.
JACKLINE: Okay go, go, go.
Let's hope it makes it onboard on time.
NARRATOR: In the terminal, Mel's waiting
on news of the meals to see if she can
upgrade her frequent flyers.
MEL: Oh perfect,
thank you, you're a star.
Well done, bye, bye.
Yes we got the two extra meals.
NARRATOR: And the last of the 416 passengers
turns up, just as the gate closes.
MEL: Gate closed
guys, finished.
NARRATOR: For Mel, the
passenger side is done and dusted on time.
But for Dave, the serious business
of piloting his first ever A380
begins in earnest.
DAVID: Ground Emirates 49 at
Delta Five ready for pushback.
GEORGE (over radio): George
Perkins, good morning ground, good day.
Delta Five, your push
off start is approved, face to the east.
DAVID: Check.
NARRATOR: In Air Traffic
Control, George Perkins
is ready to get the rookie on the runway.
GEORGE: Emirates 49 has just called, he's
locked up and ready to go and we'll get him
taxiing to the holding point,
to get him out of here.
GUY: Starting one, two,
three and four in sequence.
NARRATOR: The four GP7200 engines
are fired up by Captain Guy Brownley,
who will scrutinize Dave's every
move, from takeoff to touchdown.
GUY: Yeah, starting
one and two.
DAVID: Check.
NARRATOR: A safety pilot is on hand if Dave
cracks under the pressure and from this moment,
the A380 is in Dave's hands.
DAVID: Emirates 49 set,
we're ready for taxi.
GEORGE: Sounds cool and calm, I'm sure under
the water there's a million things going
on there, his feet are
churning a mile a minute.
NARRATOR: After 11 weeks of
training and 28 hours in the simulator,
Dave maneuvers the world's biggest
passenger plane onto the airport's
only operational runway.
GUY: Hold at Mike Kilo,
Emirates 49 super.
NARRATOR: This 550 ton jet is ten times the
size of the planes Dave's used to flying.
DAVID (off-screen): There is a lot of
pressure I guess you put on yourself,
on a day like today, the sheer size of the
airplane, you wanna do everything perfectly.
GUY: Ready now,
set for takeoff.
NARRATOR: He's only ever
done this in a simulator.
GUY: Thrust set.
DAVID (off-screen): 100 knots.
Early morning sims, late night sims,
exams and it all comes down to this.
MAN: V1.
NARRATOR: V1 marks the commit airspeed,
136 knots, the point of no return,
too fast and too dangerous
to stop the takeoff.
146 knots.
GUY: Rotate.
NARRATOR: The nose
wheel leaves the ground.
DAVID: Gear up.
GUY: Gear up.
GEORGE: No problems
reported back to us.
Well done by the pilot.
I don't' think any of his mates are
gonna be giving him any issues in the pub
afterwards, it was a smooth
takeoff and everything handled well.
Job well done.
NARRATOR: The jet will climb at up to 37 feet
a second till it reaches a cruising altitude
of 36,000 feet.
GUY: The takeoff, how did you feel
it was different from the simulator?
DAVID: The nose definitely
felt a lot heavy in the simulator.
It definitely did feel like it was a bit harder
to get off the ground and once we were in
the air, the pitch was
very, very sensitive.
GUY: Sure, and that's how you can
see your pitch change very slightly.
Besides the sensitivity of it, it was
well done and congratulations on that.
DAVID: Thank you. Thank you.
Because we've spent so much time practicing
the non-normal stuff, all the emergencies,
we haven't done too much stuff with the normal
procedures, so that added a little bit of
stress for me, just making sure
that we got the plane out on time,
so pressure added there, that
we don't really have in the sim.
So I definitely felt the stress levels
rising as we were getting through the
pre-flight process.
We got out two minutes
early, which was a really good result.
NARRATOR: Dave's first takeoff may have
gone to plan, but in just a few hours,
he's going to face an even greater
test, he's going to have to land it.
Every year, 2.6 million tons of cargo
passes through Dubai International.
For Emirates alone, freight
generates $3.1 billion.
Cargo is a vital part of future growth
plans, but so is passenger operations,
freeing up the cargo slots means space
for up to 3.8 million more passengers,
so the cargo has moved
30 miles south to Dubai World Central.
CARL: Yeah, go ahead. All the
equipment and manpower, everything's good.
NARRATOR: And where the cargo goes,
so does Ground Dispatcher Carl Knight.
(radio chatter)
CARL: Give me a call when you get
the eight cars on chocks please yeah?
NARRATOR: A triple seven freighter
has just landed from Hong Kong.
CARL: Just opening the doors, that's
exactly two hours 30 minutes now,
so the clock starts from now.
NARRATOR: In that short window, Carl's
team must unload 100 tons of freight,
load on a different 100 tons
and get the aircraft off to Frankfurt.
CARL: Watch you head.
NARRATOR: It's going to be tight and the
success of any air cargo business depends on
sending flights on time every time.
CARL: Frankfurt is
quite slot controlled,
it's important that we
get the flight out on time.
The worst case scenario for if you start
missing slots is, your destination airport,
the authorities there, they might withdraw
landing slot or maybe give that to another
carrier who's more reliable.
NARRATOR: One hour and ten minutes to
go and the inbound cargo is off the plane.
CARL: 37 units came off the
airplane, we've now got 37 units to load.
We've got some perishable goods, some
pharmaceuticals, there's fruit and veg which is
all temperature critical.
We want to get that
onboard the aircraft as quick as possible.
I mean it's already 41° out here.
NARRATOR: This triple seven freighter
is a modified passenger plane that can
transport up to 112 tons.
CARL: I try to keep
my nose out the way.
NARRATOR: Inside, the precious cargo moves
into the hold on rotatable power drive units
or PDUs in the floor.
These tiny wheels mean that pallets of up
to seven and a half tons can be loaded fast.
CARL: They're checking the height there as
well, because we do have occasions where
they're too high and we can't load
them and we have to rebuild them.
NARRATOR: 55 minutes
to departure and 15 more pallets to load.
CARL: We should just about
make the departure time.
Yeah I'd say it's tight.
NARRATOR: But just when Carl's
starting to feel confident.
MAN: Cargo got damaged.
CARL (off-screen): Oh.
How's the damage occurred?
Right, I've got some damaged
cargo to attend to, I need to assess it.
NARRATOR: First impressions of
the damaged unit aren't good.
CARL: Oh dear. Oh dear.
Cargo's become damaged,
we can't load it like this.
Oh dear.
NARRATOR: And with only 45 minutes now
left, a damaged pallet on the transporter
could put the all important
departure time in jeopardy.
CARL: Right, now it's gonna be very
touch and go. Very, very touch and go.
NARRATOR: 10:00 AM,
the upgraded northern runway
is scheduled to reopen in just one hour.
The airport's regulator, the GCAA,
has just finished its inspection.
LAWRENCE: From a pure runway perspective,
the runway is safe to operate and GCAA are
prepared to sign off.
NARRATOR: It's good
news for Lawrence Edwards,
who's in charge of Airfield Development.
But he has serious concerns
about his biggest taxiway.
LAWRENCE: What we're not happy with at the
moment is the installation of the taxiway,
Taxiway Mike.
NARRATOR: Taxiway Mike is the main exit
taxiway, running in between the northern and
southern runways.
The lights help guide pilots
safely around the airfield.
LAWRENCE: We've got lights on which should
be off and off when they should be on.
We'll not even offer the taxiway
up for inspection until we're satisfied.
I'd rather push the, the runway opening back
a couple of hours and make doubly certain that
the taxiway is safe, than
to try, try and risk anything.
Yeah, I'm looking to
move 11:00 back to 2:00.
NARRATOR: 40 minutes before the first plane
takes off, Lawrence breaks the news that
he's pushing the opening
back by three hours.
CHRIS: This is a last minute
surprise, to put it mildly.
NARRATOR: He wants to buy
some time to fix the lights, but already,
the decision is causing friction
with the engineering team.
LAWRENCE: What we're gonna do, is
go, go down, identify what the faults are,
identify which ones are
critical or which ones aren't,
and that's the plan
for the next two hours.
YOUSUF: Two hour. You don't
expect that system will be perfect.
We have perfect system,
we have to give 3, 4 weeks.
I'm disappointed with expectations,
their expectations are unrealistic.
With the time-frame we don't want
to tinker with the system in a hurry.
There is a good chance that the
circuits which are working
we will lose those taxiways.
So that's why we don't
want to do something unplanned in a hurry.
LAWRENCE (off-screen): It was
essentially an unpopular decision to make,
to push the, the opening back,
lots of hard work and effort from the
construction team's gone into getting it ready.
But if it's not, if it's
not ready and it's unsafe,
it's a very, very easy decision
to make to defer the opening.
NARRATOR: The Airside
Operations team must now break
the bad news to Air Traffic Control.
PHIL: ATC.
NARRATOR: The tower is expecting to
depart their first plane on the northern
runway in 32 minutes.
DARREN: Just to let you know, we're
not gonna be opening at 11:00 local,
we've got problems on taxiway nine, so
we're gonna go for 14:00 local opening.
PHIL: So you won't be bringing the
runway back until 2:00 this afternoon?
NARRATOR: Phil's priority is to alert
the airlines of the new reopening time.
PHIL: The schedule should still be
okay for the length of delay that we have,
that nobody has to divert,
nobody has to hold.
Some of the Emirates flights coming from
North America, they're already departed,
so when they get here they get
here and we'll have to deal with it.
NARRATOR: Miss the new deadline and
scheduling problems will start stacking
up, so the team now have just 90 minutes
to pull together and get this runway open.
30 miles away at the Emirates
cargo facility at Dubai World Central,
Carl's day is going badly.
CARL (off-screen): Holy moly,
that box will have to come out.
NARRATOR: Getting flights out on schedule is
crucial to a successful air cargo business
and he's got just 40 minutes
to get this plane loaded.
CARL: So what are you gonna
do with this pallet now?
MAN: I'm gonna
offload that one piece.
CARL: You're gonna
offload the one piece yeah?
NARRATOR: But a pallet has got
damaged and is spilling its contents.
CARL: It's caught on part of the
transporter, it's snagged on there.
I've no idea what these are, just little
plastic vessels, maybe for use in the
chemistry lab or something.
NARRATOR: Carl must make sure it doesn't
hold up the loading of the rest of the cargo.
CARL: Right, Juliet Romeo.
Interchange with Kilo Lima.
Is that okay?
What I'm trying to do now is, I'm trying
to change the loading position for the
damaged pallet with another
position that does not affect the weight
and balance of the aircraft.
It also means that I need to load this
near to the door, because it's gonna now be
loaded quite late.
NARRATOR: If the unit doesn't make this flight
in time, it could be stuck in Dubai for up
to two days, denting
the airline's reputation.
(radio chatter)
CARL: I'm now getting told
there's some more cargo missing.
NARRATOR: With 35 minutes to go, Carl's
day has just gone from bad to worse.
CARL: One added complication we've had on
this flight is the fact that three units are
still on their way from
Dubai Airport by truck.
We need to have those
units minimum at the aircraft by minus 30.
If they're not here at minus 30, there's a
very high chance the flight could get delayed.
NARRATOR: With the
three delayed cargo units in transit,
his immediate priority
is those plastic balls.
CARL: You're gonna break it down here with
these guys or you're gonna take it inside?
MAN: Unwrap it
and take it inside.
CARL: Take it inside
yeah? Okay, right.
Oh we need a plastic
bag or something, start putting these in.
Because they're gonna go all
over the ramp otherwise, yeah?
They're gonna unwrap the pallet, put all
those little containers into a plastic bag
and they're gonna rebuild it
and we'll reload it after.
MAN: Hey, hey no, no, no, no.
CARL: We're very close
to departure time now.
NARRATOR: With one
pallet damaged and three more missing,
it's not looking good.
NARRATOR: On the north side of the
airport, the Engineering Center works 24/7
to keep Emirates' 223
aircraft in tiptop shape.
The 136 acre site
includes eight vast hangars.
Each one large enough to fit an A380,
the flagship and
future of Emirates' fleet.
Today, one of these super jets is coming
into the Aircraft Appearance Center,
so its business class
cabin can get a sports car style makeover.
The plane is in the hands of
Paint Controller Peter Maddock.
PETER: Our customers
deserve the best.
NARRATOR: He's the
ultimate perfectionist.
PETER: We're classed as
a seven star airline.
NARRATOR: This A380 will be
out of action for a full five days,
just so Peter can repaint
the seats in business class.
PETER: There's no way we can let our
customers see the seats in poor condition and
that's why we have to do this.
The Emirates will ground the
aircraft, just for us to redo the seats.
NARRATOR: Even if Peter does this job
to schedule, it'll cost the airline up to
$8 million in lost revenue,
but painting them in position
is the cheapest way to get the job done.
Taking all 76 of the seats out, spraying them
in the shop and refitting them would take
two or three weeks.
First, Peter inspects every seat to
see how big the job is going to be.
PETER: Something like
this is exactly what we're looking for.
NARRATOR: Not a single
blemish escapes his attention.
PETER: The main point of concern is,
usually the corners from the food trolleys
that are coming on the
aircraft and people's luggage.
We've got a few blemishes
here, this is paint damage,
and it looks like we're gonna have to
do the whole business class, all 76 seats.
They are damaged over 90%.
NARRATOR: But Peter can't just do
touch-ups where the paint's been nicked.
PETER: This is a five coat system
that we use, similar to your luxury cars.
You can't really do a touch-up
on this because, it won't match.
NARRATOR: Instead, he'll spray every single
seat with five layers of high-tech paint in
three different colors.
Before they start, Peter's team
has to mask every single surface that
isn't being painted.
PETER: Joseph.
JOSEPH: Hello.
PETER: Just make sure that
you double-check it, okay,
before you go onto the next seat yeah?
NARRATOR: And Peter insists on checking
every single seat is done properly.
PETER: Make sure, when you've
finished this seat as well,
give me a shout and I'll check it.
I'll check it, okay?
NARRATOR: Every surface is cleaned
and sanded in preparation for painting.
PETER: Now we get to
the critical stage.
What we're gonna do now, we're gonna
go in there, we're gonna give it one coat.
And let's get in, do a
good job and let's get out.
NARRATOR: Peter is working
with a crack team of expert painters.
His top guys are used to working
on Dubai's Lamborghinis and Ferraris.
In this A380, they'll need
the same attention to detail.
PETER (off-screen): There's no room for
error, if we get one part of the process wrong
we have to start again and
obviously we can't do that.
We've got a very, very minimal
time to carry out this process.
NARRATOR: Over the next four days,
Peter's team will work around the clock,
applying 140 kilograms
of paint to the cabin.
In that time, an A380 like this
would usually fly for 52 hours, clock up
30,000 miles and carry 3,500
passengers to their destinations.
This A380 has gone nowhere,
instead, it's had an expensive paint job.
Peter's going to check if
it's seven star standard.
PETER: The guys have
been on the aircraft now for four days,
so what I'm gonna do now, I'm just gonna
go in and do a walk through the cabin,
see if we can find any defects, if
there is, we can deal with them now.
NARRATOR: It's the last day before
the aircraft is due to go back in service.
PETER: Mate, we need
to be quick with this.
I want you to go down
and check every row yeah.
MAN: Okay.
PETER: Every row for repaint.
Get this paint off.
NARRATOR: But close inspection
reveals the job is not quite up to Peter's
exacting standards.
PETER: Has anyone
got any polish?
'Cause once the lights come on
it'll stand out like a sore thumb, so.
Same here look, just
run your fingers over it, you can feel it.
People might sit on the aircraft
tomorrow and not notice the paintwork,
but they'll certainly notice
it if it's not a good job.
NARRATOR: With a last bit of advanced
engineering polish, he's finally happy.
PETER: Looking at the aircraft
now, it's been an absolutely great job.
NARRATOR: It's taken five days,
but with its new luxury interior finish,
this A380 is ready to
take to the skies again.
At Dubai World Central Airport.
CARL (off-screen): Imran, what's
the status please with those
three cargo units on
there that were coming late?
NARRATOR: Carl finally gets
his hands on the missing cargo.
CARL (off-screen): The truck has arrived and
offloading is going on at the aircraft side.
NARRATOR: And there's good
news on the damaged pallet.
A quick patch up job and
there's not a plastic ball in sight.
CARL: We got the damaged unit back, it
wasn't a major rebuild, so, job well done.
NARRATOR: But with less than 20 minutes
until this plane has to leave for Frankfurt,
some other last minute
items have turned up too.
CARL: This is 36 pieces of bulk
cargo that we've just received late,
so we're gonna try and get a
wriggle on now and get this
loaded in ten minutes if we can.
We're really quite tight for time right
now, so I just wanna give them a hand.
NARRATOR: At this late stage, the plane is
almost full, but Carl's determined to try and
get them in whatever it takes.
CARL: There's no space, we don't have a
position onboard the main cargo decks for this.
This is loose loaded inside compartment
number five, which is inside here.
Okay, let's get him down.
Okay, start it.
NARRATOR: It's last minute
stress Carl could do without.
CARL: We've got eight minutes
to departure, so we'll just finish this
two or three minutes, we'll get the
door closed up and we'll get pushing back.
These pieces here are quite awkward to load
and it's touch and go whether we can get
these two in actually.
Finished?
NARRATOR: Working until
the last possible minute,
Carl manages to get all the cargo onboard.
CARL: Okay gents, everything
loaded, we're on time.
MAN: Let's go.
CARL (off-screen): Have a good flight.
Delays cost money, so we do everything
we can to make sure the flight gets out of
here on time.
NARRATOR: Trainee A380 pilot
Dave Storey is five hours and 20 minutes
into his inaugural flight.
GUY: Right, heading zero
five zero, eyeless approach.
DAVID: Okay, right, heading
zero five zero, this is speed out star,
guide stay light blue, cat
three, pilot one and two.
GUY: Check.
NARRATOR: In half an hour, he'll arrive at
Munich Airport and will land this colossal
plane for the first time.
DAVID: I hope that I do a nice one because
I've got 500 people behind us that are
probably pretty critical judges I'd say.
NARRATOR: Captain Brownley is
on hand if things go wrong.
GUY: David's gonna land the
aircraft, although I'll be standing by to,
should I have to.
Aerogate Munich, Emirates 49 good morning.
NARRATOR: With his first ever
A380 landing on the horizon.
DAVID: Busy looking
at the airport.
NARRATOR: Dave's
nerves kick in.
DAVID: It's pretty big.
GUY: I'll talk you
through that, don't worry.
DAVID: Nervousness, the first landing's
gonna be the thing that I'm hoping that I do
well, because that's the
thing that everybody notices.
MAN (over radio): 2,500.
DAVID: Gear down.
GUY: Gear down.
NARRATOR: At 2,500 feet,
the jet's 20-ton,
22 wheel undercarriage
is released for landing.
MAN (over radio): 1,000.
NARRATOR: Dave's now just moments
away from landing this 425-ton plane.
GUY: Pitch land runway 08,
ten minutes
DAVID: Check. Autopilot off.
NARRATOR: As the runway approaches,
he slows right down to 130 knots.
MAN (over radio): 400.
300.100 above.
NARRATOR: The jet is descending
at a rate of 100 feet every ten seconds.
MAN (over radio): 200.
DAVID: It's in.
GUY (off-screen): Check.
MAN (over radio):
100.50, 40, 30, 20. Five.
NARRATOR: Touchdown.
GUY: That's it. Very nice.
Emirates 49 clear.
So, what have you got to say?
DAVID: Well I didn't bury it.
I was getting a bit worried, I thought,
oh Christ, I'm gonna hammer it in here.
GUY: It isn't that bad, you just should
have held it off just a fraction more and it
would have been perfect.
DAVID: Yeah. GUY: You just didn't
raise it another quarter of a degree.
DAVID: Mm.
GUY: Anyway.
DAVID: I'm happy,
we're still here.
GUY: Well done.
DAVID: Thank you.
NARRATOR: It wasn't the
smoothest of landings but Dave's done it,
he's brought this A380 down safely.
DAVID: Landing wasn't too bad, my palms
and my hands were a little bit sweaty,
it happens when I'm nervous.
But that was obviously the most
high pressure moment in the flight,
yeah I'm pretty happy.
It was right where
I was supposed to land, so that's good.
NARRATOR: Back in Dubai, the airport's heavy
weights are locked in tense discussions
over taxiway lighting repairs.
After 27 minutes, a decision is reached.
CHRIS (off-screen): We're gonna
open the north runway now at 2:00,
to do that means we
won't be able to use all of the taxiways,
and what we've just decreed are the taxiways
we can use, a number of the faults have been
rectified and the pressure
is still on for 2:00.
NARRATOR: With the delayed
2:00 PM deadline rapidly approaching,
out on the runway.
(radio chatter)
JOHN: Okay, here we go.
NARRATOR: Airside Operations Manager John
Taylor, must do a crucial last check for debris.
JOHN: Final inspection is
a final surface inspection.
We've probably inspected this runway
about 12 or 15 times in the last 48 hours.
LAWRENCE: JT and two vehicles just
gone past, they're doing the final sweep.
We should be hearing on the radio now,
the handover, when they get to the bottom.
JOHN: All the contractors are out the
way, so, yeah we're nearly ready to go.
NARRATOR: Lawrence and the rest
of the team can only watch and wait.
LAWRENCE: 2:00 now.
JOHN (off-screen):
Tower airside four.
(radio chatter)
JOHN: For your information sir, Mike One
November One crossing is fully serviceable.
The runway is now open, over to you.
NARRATOR: And it's official, the northern
runway is handed back to Air Traffic Control.
PHIL: So three zero right,
one two left back with ATC?
Great, thank you. Runway's ours.
Back to, back to normal ops.
NARRATOR: 5,000 workers,
two million man hours,
150,000 truck loads of material,
800,000 tons of aggregate.
Undertaking a runway construction
project this big, this quickly,
while staying open 24/7 was a huge gamble,
but Dubai has nailed it.
PHIL: It's down to the wire but that's
usually how we do things here in Dubai.
NARRATOR: The first plane to use the
northern runway after its rebuild will be
a triple seven bound for Mombasa.
PHIL: The first departure.
NARRATOR: It's a
landmark moment.
CHRIS: I will probably never seen anything
like this again in my career, that's for sure.
NARRATOR: The end of a hugely ambitious
billion-dollar engineering project.
SUZANNE: Proud, very proud, we have proven to
the whole world that nothing is impossible.
NARRATOR: Rebuilding
two runways in just 80 days.
YOUSUF: We achieved
it, thanks a lot.
NARRATOR: At the busiest
global hub on the planet.
PHIL: Off he goes.
PAUL: I think this business is the most
fantastic business in the world and when I see a
400 ton airplane rise
majestically into our azure blue sky,
I don't wanna do anything else.
SUZANNE: We achieved
it, we achieved it, so I'm just wondering,
what is the next one?
NARRATOR: With the asphalt barely
dry, Dubai International's next massive
engineering challenge is already
underway, an $816 million terminal
that will increase capacity even further.
As the ultimate airport looks to the
future, standing still is not an option.
Captioned by Cotter Captioning Services
NARRATOR: In this episode.
GUY: Thrust set.
NARRATOR: A rookie pilot takes
more than 400 lives in his hands.
GUY: Can you feel
how sensitive it is?
DAVID: Yeah it is, a lot
different to the sim.
NARRATOR: An A380 gets
a pimped up paint job.
PETER: Our customers
deserve the best.
NARRATOR: And the $1 billion runway
overhaul goes right down to the wire.
SUZANNE: We have a national
obligation to finish on time.
If we didn't, I just hate to
think what is going to happen.
NARRATOR: Dubai
International Airport,
the busiest global hub on the planet
and aiming to stay there.
FRANCOIS: Cleared for takeoff.
NARRATOR: But perfection
is never easy.
JUMAH: It's not finished,
it's supposed to be finished.
NARRATOR: More
planes to service.
MAN: Can we open the
number three engine?
NARRATOR: More
situations to deal with.
MEL: What do you
mean live snakes?
NARRATOR: More
smugglers to stop.
HASSAN: This is
the heroin here.
NARRATOR: And massive
engineering projects to complete on time.
It's non-stop, 24/7.
It's the job of 90,000
staff from all over the world,
to make this the ultimate airport.
Aviation makes up 25% of Dubai's economy
and is set to become even more important in
the years to come, so at its biggest airport,
investment for the future is critical,
even if the costs are huge.
Last year saw the $3.2 billion
construction of the world's
first dedicated A380 terminal.
JUMAH: Failure is
not an option for us here, this is Dubai.
NARRATOR: Capacity was increased
from 60 to 75 million passengers,
but in the cutthroat world of aviation,
resting on your laurels is commercial suicide.
So this year's supersized construction
project is a billion-dollar overhaul
of both runways, one after the other.
It's been running now for 79 days.
Operating on a single runway has
slashed capacity and lost the airport
$272 million in revenue already.
Airport CEO Paul Griffiths,
is hoping short-term pain
will lead to long-term gain.
PAUL: It might seem a huge
billion-dollar investment, but clearly,
if we can keep putting 60, 70,
80 and ultimately 100 million
passengers through a year,
we're gonna get that money back.
NARRATOR: Interrupting operations to
increase future capacity is a big gamble.
The airport's reputation and that of its
engineering Chief, Suzanne Al-Anani,
is on the line.
SUZANNE: The bar is getting
higher and higher and higher, so,
it's always testing you
and your capabilities.
NARRATOR: With each day of single runway
operation losing the airport $3.5 million,
this 80-day project must finish on time.
And today is day 80, crunch time.
Planes should be flying here on
the northern runway in just five hours.
CHRIS: It's critical that we
check everything is as it should be.
NARRATOR: To open, it must
pass an inspection by the GCAA,
the regulator responsible for
the Dubai Aviation Sector.
But before the airport lets the GCAA in,
they're going to check
over every inch themselves.
CHRIS: Well this is the last line of
defense, making sure that everything is now
tightened down, everything's been
cleared, so we shouldn't find any items
loose on the runway at all.
NARRATOR: Chris Garton is Senior
Vice President of Airport Operations.
54 days ago, missing light fittings delayed
the southern runway reopening by 24 hours.
They made the time up, but with
each day's overrun costing millions,
Chris will be inspecting
each fitting thoroughly.
CHRIS: It's a brand new lighting system,
our first LED-based lighting system,
so I'm saving a fortune
on the electricity bill.
NARRATOR: The 5,000 new LED lights
replace the old tungsten based system,
they use 90% less energy, last
30,000 hours and sit flush to the runway.
CHRIS: Well these are lower profile fittings,
so anybody taking off on this runway
isn't gonna hear that nose wheel of
the airplane doing the bump, bump,
bump as it goes down the runway, and
obviously, we'll see how the surface copes with
what will be over
1,000, probably 1,100 movements a day, so,
it's gonna be a busy old runway.
But we ought to be able to get something
like a 20-year life out of this runway.
That's gonna serve us
well into the future.
NARRATOR: Up in Air Traffic Control, Phil
Marques must wait for Airside Operations to
declare the runway safe before
he can get his hands on it.
PHIL: Up here, we're all just ready, kind
of anxious to get back to working with two
runways after 80 days.
NARRATOR: Dubai International is staking
its reputation on returning to a two runway,
full capacity operation today.
PHIL: For whatever reason, that runway wasn't
back into operation, we'd be in trouble,
because, we're all of a sudden getting demand
for two runways when we don't have two.
NARRATOR: Not opening
would be a costly setback for the airport
and a nightmare for passengers.
PHIL (off-screen): The biggest risks would
be airlines that wouldn't probably be
fueled up for extensive delays in
Dubai, so that would result in diversions,
passengers going to different airports
and then trying to get those flights
back into Dubai.
NARRATOR: But outside on a
taxiway, there's a problem.
2.5 miles of brand new asphalt has
been laid and with just hours to go,
a fresh hole is being cut to fix
two lights that won't switch on,
and with the stakes
so high, Engineering CEO Suzanne Al-Anani,
has been called to the site.
SUZANNE (off-screen):
I'm really annoyed.
I honestly thought that, it's been going
very smoothly the last few days, you know,
there must be a hiccup somewhere.
I rang up Yousuf,
"How is everything?"
He said, "Ah we have a problem,
better come here to see what's going on."
NARRATOR: For Suzanne's
Project Manager, Yousuf Pirzada,
it's the last thing he
needs on opening day.
YOUSUF: If we are unable to
open, the criticality of this project
for the airport and for the aviation
sector in Dubai is very, very high.
You know, a lot of people will
have problem in keeping their job
including myself.
NARRATOR: Over on the runway,
Chris has found another faulty light.
CHRIS: Have you got
a bolt for a fitting?
NARRATOR: Around 20,000 bolts have been
used to secure the new light fittings to the
asphalt, but one bolt is missing.
CHRIS (off-screen): The very worst
case scenario is the fitting could come
out of the ground and then be blown by
the jet blast and that could damage tires.
NARRATOR: Tire damage can be fatal, it
brought down an Air France Concorde in 2000,
after chunks of tire, shredded by metal
debris on a runway, ruptured a fuel tank.
CHRIS: This is a concern for me
because we shouldn't have found this.
NARRATOR: With the
runway scheduled to reopen in four hours,
Chris is forced to face the unthinkable.
CHRIS: We really have to make sure
all of these things are absolutely right,
otherwise we won't be opening.
NARRATOR: Dubai's runway upgrade is vital,
because the largest fleet of A380s on the
planet is based here.
Emirates flies 50 of
them already and has 90 more on order.
But a global shortage of pilots means
they need to train around 400 new ones
every year, to meet future demand.
MAN (over radio):
30, 20, retard.
NARRATOR: The latest recruit, Dave Storey,
has spent more than 28 hours in the simulator
and tested with emergency
scenarios from engine failure.
DAVID: Engine problem, rotate.
NARRATOR: To a
smoke-filled cockpit.
DAVID: Oh yeah,
smoke fumes. Land ASAP.
NARRATOR: Today
it's the real deal.
Dave will fly his first A380,
filled with 416 passengers,
to Munich, Germany.
DAVID: There's a lot of anticipation
for today, three months almost I'm in the
classroom, lots of simulators.
I've been looking forward to this
day for ten weeks now, it's finally here.
It's the first time with passengers
sitting behind me, but hopefully,
if the plane is exactly
like it is in the simulator,
they won't know that
I'm on my first flight.
Fuel quantity.
GUY: Check.
DAVID: Take off.
NARRATOR: The $10 million
simulators are great for training,
but the reality of the
238-foot-long super jet is very different.
DAVID: On the ground level, I looked up, I
can't believe how wide the wingspan is and the
engines are about the same size as
the entire airplane that I used to fly.
NARRATOR: The plane is 261
feet wingtip to wingtip,
with four GP7200 engines.
DAVID: It's ten times the size of
the airplane that I used to fly, so,
I imagine a mistake's gonna be a little
bit more noticeable, so definitely a very
intimidating airplane.
MEL: Morning, how are you?
NARRATOR: Inside the terminal, Emirates
have put one of their most experienced
Airport Services Managers
in charge of getting the
passengers onto Dave's maiden flight.
MEL: Hi. All ready?
NARRATOR: Mel Sabharwal is at gate A12,
to make sure nothing holds up departure.
MEL: My main concern today is, I
know we've got a new pilot onboard, so,
I don't wanna add to any additional stress
that he may be having at this stage.
So hopefully, all our boarding activities
will be finished at minus 20 and I can then go
onboard and say
"Hey, we're ready to go."
NARRATOR: While the airport is on single
runway operation, it's even more critical than
usual that flights push back on time,
but with 50 minutes until gate closure,
there's a late request
from two business class frequent flyers.
MAN: We have two upgrades.
MEL: You've got upgrades?
MAN: Yeah. MEL: From which class?
MAN: I need two
first class, yes.
MEL: Have you got meals?
MAN: We need to
request for the two meal.
MEL (off-screen): Well
you don't have meals.
MAN: No.
MEL: Okay I'll
try, can't promise.
You haven't done the upgrade yet right?
MAN: No, it's still
there under request.
NARRATOR: Mel can't hold up departure, but
she must do all she can to reward loyal and
highly valuable customers who want to use
their frequent flyer points for an upgrade.
MEL: Mate, I need two first class
meals on EK49, is that gonna be possible?
Yeah, it's an hour before departure.
(radio chatter)
MEL: Okay, let me know, 'cause I won't
actually upgrade unless we've got the meals.
Don't upgrade them
yet until we know, yeah?
MAN (off-screen): Alright,
we'll keep it on hold.
MEL: Yeah. 'Cause it's
gonna take some time.
It's a little bit complicated in the first
class cabin because we don't just cater
for one meal, we normally need to have at
least four meals ready on hand, so a big ask.
GUY: Let's do a before
start checklist to the line please. Check.
NARRATOR: In 45
minutes, trainee A380 pilot, Dave Storey,
must push back on his inaugural flight.
DAVID: Fuel quantity.
GUY (off-screen): Check.
DAVID (off-screen):
Takeoff data. GUY (off-screen): Set.
NARRATOR: But first, he must work his way
through the lengthy pre-flight checklist.
DAVID (off-screen): Main
fuel at destination is 10.4.
GUY (off-screen): Check.
DAVID (off-screen): Most important thing
today, I think, is to get the aircraft out,
the time pressures on
the ground are very, very noticeable.
NARRATOR: But inside the terminal, Dave's
flight is beginning to unravel for Mel.
40 minutes before the gate closes, there's
no sign of the first class meals for the two
business class passengers
who've asked for an upgrade.
MEL: I'm still waiting
for news for those first class meals,
I can't action any upgrades
until I've got confirmation.
No news yet? No?
NARRATOR: And 300 of the 416
passengers haven't shown up yet.
MEL: I don't see much activity at the gate,
so a little bit worrying at the moment.
NARRATOR: Gate A12
may be unusually quiet,
but over in Emirates Flight Catering,
it's a hive of activity.
JACKLINE: Yes.
Which flight is that?
NARRATOR: The Munich flight is just
one of the 360 flights that require the
145,000 meals prepared here each day.
JACKLINE (off-screen): We're
approaching about 9,000 catering staff,
serving all the
aircrafts at Dubai Airport.
It's the biggest
catering unit in the world.
NARRATOR: Duty Officer Jackline Muthoni
is in charge of last minute changes right
now, her priority is
to get Mel her extra first class meals,
which have to be freshly prepared.
Emirates passengers
consume 2.7 tons of caviar
and 113,000 bottles of
Dom Pérignon every year.
Today's first class passengers will
choose dishes from a seven course menu,
including a comfit of duck starter.
JACKLINE: How long will
it take to prepare?
WOMAN: Five minutes,
seven minutes.
JACKLINE: Five minutes. Okay,
can you make it four minutes?
We are pressed for time.
NARRATOR: The request for extra
meals has come at the worst time.
JACKLINE: Between 7:00 in
the morning to about 10:30,
we are dispatching about 102 flights.
NARRATOR: 1,250 tons of
chicken and 2.2 million eggs
go into the 53 million meals
that are prepared here each year.
JACKLINE: Hello, we need drivers and
bus, we have some urgent top up to send.
NARRATOR: The meals for the Munich flight
have been rushed to the dispatch point,
but getting them to the
plane has hit a setback.
JACKLINE: We have vans
sitting here but no drivers for the vans,
so we need to get the drivers.
It is top urgent now.
NARRATOR: Back in the terminal, it isn't
just the first class upgrade meals that
are seriously late for the Munich flight.
MEL: Aziz, we're still missing around
21 passengers, economy, for Munich.
NARRATOR: The gate
closes in 15 minutes.
MEL: There's no activity
at the gate, where are they?
NARRATOR: With the airport still on single
runway operation and a first timer in
the cockpit, delaying
departure is not an option.
MEL: It's looking a little
bit crucial at the moment.
NARRATOR: The upgraded northern runway
is scheduled to reopen in three hours,
but things aren't going to plan.
CHRIS: There's no way we can open
the runway with this in this condition.
NARRATOR: Chris Garton has discovered
that one of around 20,000 bolts,
that secure the new lights
to the runway, is missing.
CHRIS (off-screen): That's
completely gone in the base hasn't it?
The base of the fitting is made from aluminum,
yeah, so each of these holes has got a
steel grip within it and this one has
got displaced, which is why they've been
unable to get a bolt in it.
NARRATOR: It's worse than they thought,
they can't just screw in a new one.
CHRIS: It's the base
that's the problem.
If we have to core the base out, that's a
two hour job, because the material that
holds the base takes two hours to set,
so that's getting a bit desperately tight.
NARRATOR: 5,000 new LED lights
have been installed on the runway,
but one $12 bolt is
now putting the 11:00 AM deadline at risk.
CHRIS: What the guys are trying to
do is take the thread out and they can
replace it with a, with a
special spring that goes in.
And it looks like it is coming, slowly.
Mind your fingers.
You can see the steel coming out now.
NARRATOR: With people across
the airport clambering for an update,
Chris and his team manage a fix.
The irony of the situation is not lost.
CHRIS: So this is officially the first
piece of maintenance on a brand new runway,
this is the insert
that the guys have fitted into the base,
so with a bit of luck now, we'll get this
torqued down and another ten minute or so,
all finished, all done
and we're up and running.
That's the major one I was worried about.
NARRATOR: With
$272 million of revenue lost
during 80 days of single runway operation,
the northern runway must open today.
PHIL: Those two runways are what
brings the airport and Dubai money.
NARRATOR: As part of the upgrades, extra
exit taxiways have been built so planes can
get off the runway more
quickly after they land.
PHIL: What that does is reduces our runway
occupancy time and the lower your runway
occupancy time is, the more airplanes
you can be putting on that runway.
NARRATOR: And the new
taxiways are already paying dividends on
the newly upgraded southern runway.
PHIL: We've already seen in the
first month, with the southern runways,
by using one of the new exits, we've
managed to shave ten seconds off our runway
occupancy time, which is huge.
If you do that over an hour, that's
an extra two or three movements,
which just brings Dubai that much
more money, and we're hoping that,
with the northern
runway, we have the same.
NARRATOR: The taxiways may
be key to future growth, but right now,
Suzanne and Yousuf's taxiway is threatening
to grind the reopening to a halt.
Despite 650 miles of cabling
used in the runway upgrades,
two of the lights weren't wired up.
YOUSUF: What we found that
the wire were not connected.
So we have to cut the pavement
to rewire the whole thing.
We end up doing almost
100 metre of socketing
to put the new cable.
NARRATOR: Less than three hours until
opening and now there's a real chance the
11:00 AM
deadline won't be met.
YOUSUF: We are doing our best.
But this has to be
done before it can open.
NARRATOR: All eyes are on the engineering
team as they race to get these critical
safety lights working.
SUZANNE: We have a national obligation
to finish on time, to have this opened,
operational, up and running, and if we
didn't meet it, I just hate to think what is
going to happen.
NARRATOR: At Flight Catering, Jackline's
trying to get her last minute first class meal
requests out to the plane.
JACKLINE: Now, can we load very quickly
because we don't have a lot of time.
NARRATOR: She's
located a van driver.
JACKLINE: Okay,
the driver is ready.
NARRATOR: But she's
cutting it fine.
JACKLINE: Okay go, go, go.
Let's hope it makes it onboard on time.
NARRATOR: In the terminal, Mel's waiting
on news of the meals to see if she can
upgrade her frequent flyers.
MEL: Oh perfect,
thank you, you're a star.
Well done, bye, bye.
Yes we got the two extra meals.
NARRATOR: And the last of the 416 passengers
turns up, just as the gate closes.
MEL: Gate closed
guys, finished.
NARRATOR: For Mel, the
passenger side is done and dusted on time.
But for Dave, the serious business
of piloting his first ever A380
begins in earnest.
DAVID: Ground Emirates 49 at
Delta Five ready for pushback.
GEORGE (over radio): George
Perkins, good morning ground, good day.
Delta Five, your push
off start is approved, face to the east.
DAVID: Check.
NARRATOR: In Air Traffic
Control, George Perkins
is ready to get the rookie on the runway.
GEORGE: Emirates 49 has just called, he's
locked up and ready to go and we'll get him
taxiing to the holding point,
to get him out of here.
GUY: Starting one, two,
three and four in sequence.
NARRATOR: The four GP7200 engines
are fired up by Captain Guy Brownley,
who will scrutinize Dave's every
move, from takeoff to touchdown.
GUY: Yeah, starting
one and two.
DAVID: Check.
NARRATOR: A safety pilot is on hand if Dave
cracks under the pressure and from this moment,
the A380 is in Dave's hands.
DAVID: Emirates 49 set,
we're ready for taxi.
GEORGE: Sounds cool and calm, I'm sure under
the water there's a million things going
on there, his feet are
churning a mile a minute.
NARRATOR: After 11 weeks of
training and 28 hours in the simulator,
Dave maneuvers the world's biggest
passenger plane onto the airport's
only operational runway.
GUY: Hold at Mike Kilo,
Emirates 49 super.
NARRATOR: This 550 ton jet is ten times the
size of the planes Dave's used to flying.
DAVID (off-screen): There is a lot of
pressure I guess you put on yourself,
on a day like today, the sheer size of the
airplane, you wanna do everything perfectly.
GUY: Ready now,
set for takeoff.
NARRATOR: He's only ever
done this in a simulator.
GUY: Thrust set.
DAVID (off-screen): 100 knots.
Early morning sims, late night sims,
exams and it all comes down to this.
MAN: V1.
NARRATOR: V1 marks the commit airspeed,
136 knots, the point of no return,
too fast and too dangerous
to stop the takeoff.
146 knots.
GUY: Rotate.
NARRATOR: The nose
wheel leaves the ground.
DAVID: Gear up.
GUY: Gear up.
GEORGE: No problems
reported back to us.
Well done by the pilot.
I don't' think any of his mates are
gonna be giving him any issues in the pub
afterwards, it was a smooth
takeoff and everything handled well.
Job well done.
NARRATOR: The jet will climb at up to 37 feet
a second till it reaches a cruising altitude
of 36,000 feet.
GUY: The takeoff, how did you feel
it was different from the simulator?
DAVID: The nose definitely
felt a lot heavy in the simulator.
It definitely did feel like it was a bit harder
to get off the ground and once we were in
the air, the pitch was
very, very sensitive.
GUY: Sure, and that's how you can
see your pitch change very slightly.
Besides the sensitivity of it, it was
well done and congratulations on that.
DAVID: Thank you. Thank you.
Because we've spent so much time practicing
the non-normal stuff, all the emergencies,
we haven't done too much stuff with the normal
procedures, so that added a little bit of
stress for me, just making sure
that we got the plane out on time,
so pressure added there, that
we don't really have in the sim.
So I definitely felt the stress levels
rising as we were getting through the
pre-flight process.
We got out two minutes
early, which was a really good result.
NARRATOR: Dave's first takeoff may have
gone to plan, but in just a few hours,
he's going to face an even greater
test, he's going to have to land it.
Every year, 2.6 million tons of cargo
passes through Dubai International.
For Emirates alone, freight
generates $3.1 billion.
Cargo is a vital part of future growth
plans, but so is passenger operations,
freeing up the cargo slots means space
for up to 3.8 million more passengers,
so the cargo has moved
30 miles south to Dubai World Central.
CARL: Yeah, go ahead. All the
equipment and manpower, everything's good.
NARRATOR: And where the cargo goes,
so does Ground Dispatcher Carl Knight.
(radio chatter)
CARL: Give me a call when you get
the eight cars on chocks please yeah?
NARRATOR: A triple seven freighter
has just landed from Hong Kong.
CARL: Just opening the doors, that's
exactly two hours 30 minutes now,
so the clock starts from now.
NARRATOR: In that short window, Carl's
team must unload 100 tons of freight,
load on a different 100 tons
and get the aircraft off to Frankfurt.
CARL: Watch you head.
NARRATOR: It's going to be tight and the
success of any air cargo business depends on
sending flights on time every time.
CARL: Frankfurt is
quite slot controlled,
it's important that we
get the flight out on time.
The worst case scenario for if you start
missing slots is, your destination airport,
the authorities there, they might withdraw
landing slot or maybe give that to another
carrier who's more reliable.
NARRATOR: One hour and ten minutes to
go and the inbound cargo is off the plane.
CARL: 37 units came off the
airplane, we've now got 37 units to load.
We've got some perishable goods, some
pharmaceuticals, there's fruit and veg which is
all temperature critical.
We want to get that
onboard the aircraft as quick as possible.
I mean it's already 41° out here.
NARRATOR: This triple seven freighter
is a modified passenger plane that can
transport up to 112 tons.
CARL: I try to keep
my nose out the way.
NARRATOR: Inside, the precious cargo moves
into the hold on rotatable power drive units
or PDUs in the floor.
These tiny wheels mean that pallets of up
to seven and a half tons can be loaded fast.
CARL: They're checking the height there as
well, because we do have occasions where
they're too high and we can't load
them and we have to rebuild them.
NARRATOR: 55 minutes
to departure and 15 more pallets to load.
CARL: We should just about
make the departure time.
Yeah I'd say it's tight.
NARRATOR: But just when Carl's
starting to feel confident.
MAN: Cargo got damaged.
CARL (off-screen): Oh.
How's the damage occurred?
Right, I've got some damaged
cargo to attend to, I need to assess it.
NARRATOR: First impressions of
the damaged unit aren't good.
CARL: Oh dear. Oh dear.
Cargo's become damaged,
we can't load it like this.
Oh dear.
NARRATOR: And with only 45 minutes now
left, a damaged pallet on the transporter
could put the all important
departure time in jeopardy.
CARL: Right, now it's gonna be very
touch and go. Very, very touch and go.
NARRATOR: 10:00 AM,
the upgraded northern runway
is scheduled to reopen in just one hour.
The airport's regulator, the GCAA,
has just finished its inspection.
LAWRENCE: From a pure runway perspective,
the runway is safe to operate and GCAA are
prepared to sign off.
NARRATOR: It's good
news for Lawrence Edwards,
who's in charge of Airfield Development.
But he has serious concerns
about his biggest taxiway.
LAWRENCE: What we're not happy with at the
moment is the installation of the taxiway,
Taxiway Mike.
NARRATOR: Taxiway Mike is the main exit
taxiway, running in between the northern and
southern runways.
The lights help guide pilots
safely around the airfield.
LAWRENCE: We've got lights on which should
be off and off when they should be on.
We'll not even offer the taxiway
up for inspection until we're satisfied.
I'd rather push the, the runway opening back
a couple of hours and make doubly certain that
the taxiway is safe, than
to try, try and risk anything.
Yeah, I'm looking to
move 11:00 back to 2:00.
NARRATOR: 40 minutes before the first plane
takes off, Lawrence breaks the news that
he's pushing the opening
back by three hours.
CHRIS: This is a last minute
surprise, to put it mildly.
NARRATOR: He wants to buy
some time to fix the lights, but already,
the decision is causing friction
with the engineering team.
LAWRENCE: What we're gonna do, is
go, go down, identify what the faults are,
identify which ones are
critical or which ones aren't,
and that's the plan
for the next two hours.
YOUSUF: Two hour. You don't
expect that system will be perfect.
We have perfect system,
we have to give 3, 4 weeks.
I'm disappointed with expectations,
their expectations are unrealistic.
With the time-frame we don't want
to tinker with the system in a hurry.
There is a good chance that the
circuits which are working
we will lose those taxiways.
So that's why we don't
want to do something unplanned in a hurry.
LAWRENCE (off-screen): It was
essentially an unpopular decision to make,
to push the, the opening back,
lots of hard work and effort from the
construction team's gone into getting it ready.
But if it's not, if it's
not ready and it's unsafe,
it's a very, very easy decision
to make to defer the opening.
NARRATOR: The Airside
Operations team must now break
the bad news to Air Traffic Control.
PHIL: ATC.
NARRATOR: The tower is expecting to
depart their first plane on the northern
runway in 32 minutes.
DARREN: Just to let you know, we're
not gonna be opening at 11:00 local,
we've got problems on taxiway nine, so
we're gonna go for 14:00 local opening.
PHIL: So you won't be bringing the
runway back until 2:00 this afternoon?
NARRATOR: Phil's priority is to alert
the airlines of the new reopening time.
PHIL: The schedule should still be
okay for the length of delay that we have,
that nobody has to divert,
nobody has to hold.
Some of the Emirates flights coming from
North America, they're already departed,
so when they get here they get
here and we'll have to deal with it.
NARRATOR: Miss the new deadline and
scheduling problems will start stacking
up, so the team now have just 90 minutes
to pull together and get this runway open.
30 miles away at the Emirates
cargo facility at Dubai World Central,
Carl's day is going badly.
CARL (off-screen): Holy moly,
that box will have to come out.
NARRATOR: Getting flights out on schedule is
crucial to a successful air cargo business
and he's got just 40 minutes
to get this plane loaded.
CARL: So what are you gonna
do with this pallet now?
MAN: I'm gonna
offload that one piece.
CARL: You're gonna
offload the one piece yeah?
NARRATOR: But a pallet has got
damaged and is spilling its contents.
CARL: It's caught on part of the
transporter, it's snagged on there.
I've no idea what these are, just little
plastic vessels, maybe for use in the
chemistry lab or something.
NARRATOR: Carl must make sure it doesn't
hold up the loading of the rest of the cargo.
CARL: Right, Juliet Romeo.
Interchange with Kilo Lima.
Is that okay?
What I'm trying to do now is, I'm trying
to change the loading position for the
damaged pallet with another
position that does not affect the weight
and balance of the aircraft.
It also means that I need to load this
near to the door, because it's gonna now be
loaded quite late.
NARRATOR: If the unit doesn't make this flight
in time, it could be stuck in Dubai for up
to two days, denting
the airline's reputation.
(radio chatter)
CARL: I'm now getting told
there's some more cargo missing.
NARRATOR: With 35 minutes to go, Carl's
day has just gone from bad to worse.
CARL: One added complication we've had on
this flight is the fact that three units are
still on their way from
Dubai Airport by truck.
We need to have those
units minimum at the aircraft by minus 30.
If they're not here at minus 30, there's a
very high chance the flight could get delayed.
NARRATOR: With the
three delayed cargo units in transit,
his immediate priority
is those plastic balls.
CARL: You're gonna break it down here with
these guys or you're gonna take it inside?
MAN: Unwrap it
and take it inside.
CARL: Take it inside
yeah? Okay, right.
Oh we need a plastic
bag or something, start putting these in.
Because they're gonna go all
over the ramp otherwise, yeah?
They're gonna unwrap the pallet, put all
those little containers into a plastic bag
and they're gonna rebuild it
and we'll reload it after.
MAN: Hey, hey no, no, no, no.
CARL: We're very close
to departure time now.
NARRATOR: With one
pallet damaged and three more missing,
it's not looking good.
NARRATOR: On the north side of the
airport, the Engineering Center works 24/7
to keep Emirates' 223
aircraft in tiptop shape.
The 136 acre site
includes eight vast hangars.
Each one large enough to fit an A380,
the flagship and
future of Emirates' fleet.
Today, one of these super jets is coming
into the Aircraft Appearance Center,
so its business class
cabin can get a sports car style makeover.
The plane is in the hands of
Paint Controller Peter Maddock.
PETER: Our customers
deserve the best.
NARRATOR: He's the
ultimate perfectionist.
PETER: We're classed as
a seven star airline.
NARRATOR: This A380 will be
out of action for a full five days,
just so Peter can repaint
the seats in business class.
PETER: There's no way we can let our
customers see the seats in poor condition and
that's why we have to do this.
The Emirates will ground the
aircraft, just for us to redo the seats.
NARRATOR: Even if Peter does this job
to schedule, it'll cost the airline up to
$8 million in lost revenue,
but painting them in position
is the cheapest way to get the job done.
Taking all 76 of the seats out, spraying them
in the shop and refitting them would take
two or three weeks.
First, Peter inspects every seat to
see how big the job is going to be.
PETER: Something like
this is exactly what we're looking for.
NARRATOR: Not a single
blemish escapes his attention.
PETER: The main point of concern is,
usually the corners from the food trolleys
that are coming on the
aircraft and people's luggage.
We've got a few blemishes
here, this is paint damage,
and it looks like we're gonna have to
do the whole business class, all 76 seats.
They are damaged over 90%.
NARRATOR: But Peter can't just do
touch-ups where the paint's been nicked.
PETER: This is a five coat system
that we use, similar to your luxury cars.
You can't really do a touch-up
on this because, it won't match.
NARRATOR: Instead, he'll spray every single
seat with five layers of high-tech paint in
three different colors.
Before they start, Peter's team
has to mask every single surface that
isn't being painted.
PETER: Joseph.
JOSEPH: Hello.
PETER: Just make sure that
you double-check it, okay,
before you go onto the next seat yeah?
NARRATOR: And Peter insists on checking
every single seat is done properly.
PETER: Make sure, when you've
finished this seat as well,
give me a shout and I'll check it.
I'll check it, okay?
NARRATOR: Every surface is cleaned
and sanded in preparation for painting.
PETER: Now we get to
the critical stage.
What we're gonna do now, we're gonna
go in there, we're gonna give it one coat.
And let's get in, do a
good job and let's get out.
NARRATOR: Peter is working
with a crack team of expert painters.
His top guys are used to working
on Dubai's Lamborghinis and Ferraris.
In this A380, they'll need
the same attention to detail.
PETER (off-screen): There's no room for
error, if we get one part of the process wrong
we have to start again and
obviously we can't do that.
We've got a very, very minimal
time to carry out this process.
NARRATOR: Over the next four days,
Peter's team will work around the clock,
applying 140 kilograms
of paint to the cabin.
In that time, an A380 like this
would usually fly for 52 hours, clock up
30,000 miles and carry 3,500
passengers to their destinations.
This A380 has gone nowhere,
instead, it's had an expensive paint job.
Peter's going to check if
it's seven star standard.
PETER: The guys have
been on the aircraft now for four days,
so what I'm gonna do now, I'm just gonna
go in and do a walk through the cabin,
see if we can find any defects, if
there is, we can deal with them now.
NARRATOR: It's the last day before
the aircraft is due to go back in service.
PETER: Mate, we need
to be quick with this.
I want you to go down
and check every row yeah.
MAN: Okay.
PETER: Every row for repaint.
Get this paint off.
NARRATOR: But close inspection
reveals the job is not quite up to Peter's
exacting standards.
PETER: Has anyone
got any polish?
'Cause once the lights come on
it'll stand out like a sore thumb, so.
Same here look, just
run your fingers over it, you can feel it.
People might sit on the aircraft
tomorrow and not notice the paintwork,
but they'll certainly notice
it if it's not a good job.
NARRATOR: With a last bit of advanced
engineering polish, he's finally happy.
PETER: Looking at the aircraft
now, it's been an absolutely great job.
NARRATOR: It's taken five days,
but with its new luxury interior finish,
this A380 is ready to
take to the skies again.
At Dubai World Central Airport.
CARL (off-screen): Imran, what's
the status please with those
three cargo units on
there that were coming late?
NARRATOR: Carl finally gets
his hands on the missing cargo.
CARL (off-screen): The truck has arrived and
offloading is going on at the aircraft side.
NARRATOR: And there's good
news on the damaged pallet.
A quick patch up job and
there's not a plastic ball in sight.
CARL: We got the damaged unit back, it
wasn't a major rebuild, so, job well done.
NARRATOR: But with less than 20 minutes
until this plane has to leave for Frankfurt,
some other last minute
items have turned up too.
CARL: This is 36 pieces of bulk
cargo that we've just received late,
so we're gonna try and get a
wriggle on now and get this
loaded in ten minutes if we can.
We're really quite tight for time right
now, so I just wanna give them a hand.
NARRATOR: At this late stage, the plane is
almost full, but Carl's determined to try and
get them in whatever it takes.
CARL: There's no space, we don't have a
position onboard the main cargo decks for this.
This is loose loaded inside compartment
number five, which is inside here.
Okay, let's get him down.
Okay, start it.
NARRATOR: It's last minute
stress Carl could do without.
CARL: We've got eight minutes
to departure, so we'll just finish this
two or three minutes, we'll get the
door closed up and we'll get pushing back.
These pieces here are quite awkward to load
and it's touch and go whether we can get
these two in actually.
Finished?
NARRATOR: Working until
the last possible minute,
Carl manages to get all the cargo onboard.
CARL: Okay gents, everything
loaded, we're on time.
MAN: Let's go.
CARL (off-screen): Have a good flight.
Delays cost money, so we do everything
we can to make sure the flight gets out of
here on time.
NARRATOR: Trainee A380 pilot
Dave Storey is five hours and 20 minutes
into his inaugural flight.
GUY: Right, heading zero
five zero, eyeless approach.
DAVID: Okay, right, heading
zero five zero, this is speed out star,
guide stay light blue, cat
three, pilot one and two.
GUY: Check.
NARRATOR: In half an hour, he'll arrive at
Munich Airport and will land this colossal
plane for the first time.
DAVID: I hope that I do a nice one because
I've got 500 people behind us that are
probably pretty critical judges I'd say.
NARRATOR: Captain Brownley is
on hand if things go wrong.
GUY: David's gonna land the
aircraft, although I'll be standing by to,
should I have to.
Aerogate Munich, Emirates 49 good morning.
NARRATOR: With his first ever
A380 landing on the horizon.
DAVID: Busy looking
at the airport.
NARRATOR: Dave's
nerves kick in.
DAVID: It's pretty big.
GUY: I'll talk you
through that, don't worry.
DAVID: Nervousness, the first landing's
gonna be the thing that I'm hoping that I do
well, because that's the
thing that everybody notices.
MAN (over radio): 2,500.
DAVID: Gear down.
GUY: Gear down.
NARRATOR: At 2,500 feet,
the jet's 20-ton,
22 wheel undercarriage
is released for landing.
MAN (over radio): 1,000.
NARRATOR: Dave's now just moments
away from landing this 425-ton plane.
GUY: Pitch land runway 08,
ten minutes
DAVID: Check. Autopilot off.
NARRATOR: As the runway approaches,
he slows right down to 130 knots.
MAN (over radio): 400.
300.100 above.
NARRATOR: The jet is descending
at a rate of 100 feet every ten seconds.
MAN (over radio): 200.
DAVID: It's in.
GUY (off-screen): Check.
MAN (over radio):
100.50, 40, 30, 20. Five.
NARRATOR: Touchdown.
GUY: That's it. Very nice.
Emirates 49 clear.
So, what have you got to say?
DAVID: Well I didn't bury it.
I was getting a bit worried, I thought,
oh Christ, I'm gonna hammer it in here.
GUY: It isn't that bad, you just should
have held it off just a fraction more and it
would have been perfect.
DAVID: Yeah. GUY: You just didn't
raise it another quarter of a degree.
DAVID: Mm.
GUY: Anyway.
DAVID: I'm happy,
we're still here.
GUY: Well done.
DAVID: Thank you.
NARRATOR: It wasn't the
smoothest of landings but Dave's done it,
he's brought this A380 down safely.
DAVID: Landing wasn't too bad, my palms
and my hands were a little bit sweaty,
it happens when I'm nervous.
But that was obviously the most
high pressure moment in the flight,
yeah I'm pretty happy.
It was right where
I was supposed to land, so that's good.
NARRATOR: Back in Dubai, the airport's heavy
weights are locked in tense discussions
over taxiway lighting repairs.
After 27 minutes, a decision is reached.
CHRIS (off-screen): We're gonna
open the north runway now at 2:00,
to do that means we
won't be able to use all of the taxiways,
and what we've just decreed are the taxiways
we can use, a number of the faults have been
rectified and the pressure
is still on for 2:00.
NARRATOR: With the delayed
2:00 PM deadline rapidly approaching,
out on the runway.
(radio chatter)
JOHN: Okay, here we go.
NARRATOR: Airside Operations Manager John
Taylor, must do a crucial last check for debris.
JOHN: Final inspection is
a final surface inspection.
We've probably inspected this runway
about 12 or 15 times in the last 48 hours.
LAWRENCE: JT and two vehicles just
gone past, they're doing the final sweep.
We should be hearing on the radio now,
the handover, when they get to the bottom.
JOHN: All the contractors are out the
way, so, yeah we're nearly ready to go.
NARRATOR: Lawrence and the rest
of the team can only watch and wait.
LAWRENCE: 2:00 now.
JOHN (off-screen):
Tower airside four.
(radio chatter)
JOHN: For your information sir, Mike One
November One crossing is fully serviceable.
The runway is now open, over to you.
NARRATOR: And it's official, the northern
runway is handed back to Air Traffic Control.
PHIL: So three zero right,
one two left back with ATC?
Great, thank you. Runway's ours.
Back to, back to normal ops.
NARRATOR: 5,000 workers,
two million man hours,
150,000 truck loads of material,
800,000 tons of aggregate.
Undertaking a runway construction
project this big, this quickly,
while staying open 24/7 was a huge gamble,
but Dubai has nailed it.
PHIL: It's down to the wire but that's
usually how we do things here in Dubai.
NARRATOR: The first plane to use the
northern runway after its rebuild will be
a triple seven bound for Mombasa.
PHIL: The first departure.
NARRATOR: It's a
landmark moment.
CHRIS: I will probably never seen anything
like this again in my career, that's for sure.
NARRATOR: The end of a hugely ambitious
billion-dollar engineering project.
SUZANNE: Proud, very proud, we have proven to
the whole world that nothing is impossible.
NARRATOR: Rebuilding
two runways in just 80 days.
YOUSUF: We achieved
it, thanks a lot.
NARRATOR: At the busiest
global hub on the planet.
PHIL: Off he goes.
PAUL: I think this business is the most
fantastic business in the world and when I see a
400 ton airplane rise
majestically into our azure blue sky,
I don't wanna do anything else.
SUZANNE: We achieved
it, we achieved it, so I'm just wondering,
what is the next one?
NARRATOR: With the asphalt barely
dry, Dubai International's next massive
engineering challenge is already
underway, an $816 million terminal
that will increase capacity even further.
As the ultimate airport looks to the
future, standing still is not an option.
Captioned by Cotter Captioning Services