Episode 3 Airport Live

to paint a plane or how to take your dog across the Atlantic on holiday

with you, or what air traffic control do when a pilot decides not

to land his plane after all, then you are in the right place. This is

here at Heathrow Airport. This is the busiest international transport

hub in the world. The weather has rather dominated today. It's been

glorious here. Pretty calm and warm. Not very windy. But the weather,

oddly, has been causing a great deal of anxiety and not a little stress

to the people who work in the tower here. There are two letters in the

alphabet that air traffic controllers don't want to hear and

those are C and B which stand rather oddly, I am not sure I understand

it, for cumulus Nimbus. Thunder storms. They've been causing

disruption that we will find out about later. First, let's go to

Terminal 3. One of those people down there is Anita.

I am at stand number 319. If you were to board this plane you would

be at gate 19. Behind me is an A340. It has four engines. This flight is

a Virgin plane and there's being else quirky about it and that is all

Virgin flights have girls' names. Nice touch. Ours is called Bubbles,

she was born in July 2006 and Bubbles has been a very busy lady

this week, she's flown from Johannesburg to Los Angeles, to

Tokyo at 4.00 and at 9.00 she will be departing to Johannesburg. This

evening we have access all areas to discover what goes on to prepare a

plane for a long haul flight. Behind me they're actually loading the

cargo on to this plane. Find out what a little bit later.

Thank you very much, Anita. How about Dallas, what's he up to? Those

buildings out in the distance there are the maintenance sheds and Dallas

is doing DIY but on a grand scale. Thank you, I have been spared the

pink high-vis. I have been put to work today, I am in the paint bay

hangar and with me is the man in charge, I say this is the paint bay

hangar, this is the only one? Every single BA plane in the fleet will

come here to be painted several times during its lifetime? That's

right. We have the fleet through here on a rotation. Every five years

through the facility. Behind us you will see a shiny looking Airbus A320

which is hopefully going to be taken out later on the programme. Almost

finished, there is more work that needs to be done. That's right.

There is a couple of very important jobs that need doing. We are going

to get to you do them, Dallas. the overalls. It does look brand new

but that plane, how old is it? Delivered on December 2002, about 11

years old. Over the week we have been asking you to send your

questions about Heathrow and we have one here from Tina and her son,

Jack. They want to know how long does it take to paint a plane,

that's a very good question. I have been very, very involved in the

For Dave Barnes and his team the art of painting a plane begins with

careful preparation. It's a painstaking and time-consuming

process. When we get to the painting stage it's a sigh of relief because

it's easy from there on. Protecting the plane is the first job for the

paint bay's newest recruit, Sophie. When the aircraft first arrives in

it's looking a bit tired. Worse for wear. Like an old car, it just needs

tender loving care. First thing we do is protect the wheels. Then we

begin with things like the windows and then all the parts of the

aircraft, for example, the fin will be protected, the stabilisers, the

wings. Sophie started as cabin crew before realising her real passion

was painting. When they come in I am always thinking about, I probably

did Paris there and back on this. Sometimes I do sort of crave flying

a little bit. I miss the glamour. There is no comparison. I have lost

all glamour. Every moment this A320 is out of service costs the company

money. So over six days a team of more than 40 painters will work

around the clock to get it back in the air as soon as possible. I am

intrigued to see how we start stripping the paint off, but I am

ready. We are going to take a layer of paint off and it's going to go

down to the primer that was first put on by Airbus during the

manufacturing stages. Are you not going to the aluminium? During the

manufacturing they bake on the primer and it's a protective coat.

All we want to do is get a nice even coat. It's easy, on the trigger and

off you go. OK. Got it. You can see the difference between

yours and mine. Yours is beautiful and neat and gorgeous and mine is a

blooming mess. It comes with practice. Today you are my

apprentice and by the end of the day yours is going to look like that.

The based stripper works on a warm and humid environment so the entire

floor is sprayed with water and the hangar heated to a balmy 22 Celsius.

It's coming off, I thought we would be here for days, but it's flaking

off. That is really quite satisfying. It's lovely. Just watch

offers engineers a rare glimpse of the naked fuselage. Over eight hours

they examine every inch of the plane looking for any evidence of

corrosion or impact damage. Then four days after it came in, it's

finally time to start painting. sort of start at the top and then we

will work down in lengths. aircraft is earthed to give it a

negative electrostatic charge. Turbines inside the spray guns give

the paint a positive charge. This helps attract it to the body of the

plane and minimises waste. Do I paint this? Yeah, when you get to

this area flip upwards. OK. What was it about painting that really gets

you so excited? My father has his own spray shop back in Essex. I have

always watched him and I really admire his creativity. Is your dad

excited you are working here? tells everyone. First day I come

home in boots and covered in paint, is kept at a toasty 35 Celsius, the

opt minimum temperature to cure the paint over a six-hour period. Then

it's time for the tricky bit. The bit we see is the artwork. Talk me

through how that works. I assumed it was stickers you put on for each bit

of colour. That's now it? We have our graphics department and we cut

our stencils and they make them to smaller manageable sizes and are

given a map. The complex bit is getting the tail right. They build

from the bottom up. If they get that right the rest goes up. With the

stencils in place, the plane gets braped in plastic with the --

wrapped in plastic with only the areas left to be painted blue

exposed and the process is repeated for the red sections. Once that's

dried, the covers come off and the plane is ready to go back into

service. Seeing the aircraft go out is just so satisfying for the soul

to know that you have worked on something, worked on your passion. I

do take a little picture and keep a record of the registration. As the

years go on I am going to have a nice long list to keep an eye on in

the sky. There you go, that's how it all

works. I should point out that the plane in that film is not this

plane. That plane is long gone. We don't care about that any more. This

is the one we are thinking about. Although we did try and work out

about an hour ago find out where that plane is. Did we get that?

found out. It should be over Greece by now and on the way to Istanbul.

It's earning a living, taking passengers to where it needs to go.

When you decided to change your career from working in cabin crew to

working in the paint bay, how did you get the job? Well, I had a very

long flight to LA and due to jet lag woke up in the middle of the night,

found the job internally and had an interview when I got back. Boredom

and lack of sleep is what got you to work in the paint bay? Exactly.Did

your friends think you were bonkers? They thought I was mad. The Captain

on the last flight said, please, remember, don't paint the windows

when he signed a card. We have all these actual stencils to do, most

have been done. Why do we have to paint these, the rest of the plane

we have been using spray guns. guns creates a cloud of dust that

could ruin the work. To keep it clean we use a roller and stencils.

That's it? That's like the one I do around my light switch. Like at

home. Here white is information. And red is anything important warning

signs. I didn't realise how many stencils were on here. There is a

lot of text. There is 66 on this engine alone. You have saved the

last one for me. I have been nervous about this all day. Here it is here.

Shall I have a go? Sure. Rip that paper off for me. That's the backing

paper off like that. Give that to you. I feel like I am about to go

into surgery with my green gloves. Do I just roll it? Because it's a

smaller stencil you can dab it in lightly. Here goes. This is what I

have been nervous about all day. long as there is no blue that should

be fine. How is that?A little bit more on the T. OK.Perfect I will

hold that, one thing I am not going to do is peel off the backing. It's

all your fault if it goes horribly wrong. I thought you would have to

wait for it to dry. If it's dry it could rip off the paint with it. We

like to do it when it's still wet. There we are. Wow, that's amazing.

Look at that. Not too bad, lovely. Andy Warhol would be very impressed.

Back to you, Kate. Thank you very much, Dallas. He is

available for paint jobs after Thursday, I gather. Now I have come

here up to the visual control room and I am here with Dave Marshall.

It's been a little bit of a complicated day, would that be fair

to say? Yeah, this morning was a little bit tricky for us and that

gathered into the rest of the day. It's still the epitome of calm that

it always is, but apparently it's been difficult. We will be finding

out why in a moment. But, frankly, if you are not an airtraffic

controller every single moment of every day seems tricky, particularly

the early morning rush. Heathrow's runways are quiet at

night. There are no scheduled flights between 11. 30 and 4. 30.

This morning controllers Aidy and Dave are on the early shift. 4. 30,

first arrival is 26 from Hong Kong. His lights are starting to appear in

the distance now. Clear to land, runway...

Because of Heathrow's noise restrictions for the next hour and a

half this is no -- no more than a trickle of planes, but that changes.

Continue approach. Number two. that time dozens of flights have

arrived into London air space from the Far East and America. They will

now be circling in the four holding stacks serving Heathrow, all waiting

for the airport to fully open at 6.00. Continue approach, 278, you

are number two. With so many planes arriving, Heathrow's normal

procedure of using one runway for take-offs and one for landings

doesn't work. There are just too many planes. Clear to land.Between

6.00 and 7.00 each day air traffic control employees special tactics to

deal with this peak demand. Because there are so many arrivals, we land

on both runways. Aidy is operating the a mixed mode runway.

It is a runway that's used for take-offs and landings, controllers

need to fill the small gaps between landing aircraft with planes taking

a off. As soon as an aircraft has taken off and left the run scwep

way, air traffic control give clearance for a plane it to land and

as soon as that aircraft's wheels are on the ground, another one can

are on the ground, another one can follow.

This precise interweaving of aircraft continues for up to an hour

every morning. Next to land, is a BA 777.

There will be a departure between you and the next landing aircraft.

Aidy has just cleared the next aircraft to land. He asked them to

have minimum time in the runway because he only has a six mile gap

before the next landing. As soon as the British Airways plane

lands, aidy instructs a Swissair craft to start taxing towards the

runway. It hasn't got long and American Airlines plane is on its

final approach. The moment the BA plane exits the runway, aidy clears

the Swiss plane for takeoff. You can see the landing lights out

of the window and aidy cleared the Swiss to depart, telling them the

landing traffic is three miles. So this is going to work nicely.

With the Swiss plane airborne, Aide gives the American Airlines plane

clearance to land. This meshing together of two lanes

of traffic is not a job for the faint-hearted. 26 seconds after the

Swissair craft left the strip, the American's wheels touch down.

By 7 7 seven, the worst of the rush hour is over and things return to

what the controllers call normal! You really have all got nerves of

You really have all got nerves of steel, haven't you? Is it a massive

adrenalin rush the hour between six and seven? No, we do that at six to

seven every day so it becomes a norm.

You don't have a racing heart. I mean, I do, every time I do live

television? I'm more nervous doing live television! As I said at the

top of the show, it has been a beautiful day. It is lovely over

Windsor Castle to the west of us, but actually we can feel the weather

is changing. It is getting blustery on this side of the tower and Dave,

you showed me this weather map. Can you just talk me through it because

this has been the source of all your troubles today, if I may put it that

way? Last night and this morning, these thunderstorms over Northern

France and Belgium and the Dutch coast, were forming and they haven't

really moved. So this morning, the long haul traffic very punctual, it

was great, but our short haul traffic was delayed and delayed

inbound and if you are in your international hub, joining your hall

with your short haul is vital. literally this worked like a barrier

for planes coming in to Heathrow and planes going out? It did, yes. So

the short haul inbounds didn't meet the long haul outbounds.

Did that mean you basically ended up with an enormous number of delays of

at the beginning of the day? delays didn't material materialise

into much, 15 minutes to 30 minutes. At one point instead of giving

southbounds every two minute, we were restricting restricting it to

one every six minutes. I mean one question that's come in

from George, is why planes can't just fly through the thunderstorms?

Surely they are more robust than that? I mean they are robust to take

lightening strikes. Going through a thunderstorm, there is down drafts

and hailstones the size of tennis balls, lightening strikes and severe

turbulence and it is never a great idea.

The best and safest thing is to work with the pilot, re-route the planes

the best wayle you can or hold them -- way you can or hold them until

the weather gets better? They are not flying the predicted routes. You

are sitting in the terminal on a nice day thinking "what's going on?"

Passengers can cause delays too. Particularly ones that don't turn up

for the flights they have checked in for and that's more common that you

Turn arounds at Heathrow words like pit stops for planes.

Those in charge of the process, like Graham Cornish at Virgin and Michael

Joseph at BA are instrumental in making sure everything runs

smoothly. The aircraft make money when they

are in the air so that's where they need to be. Graham is trying to get

one of Virgin's flights off to New York on time. Have you got all

passengers down? Seven down. Missing passengers are one of his

biggest headaches. We are down seven passengers. Some are off connection

flights. Let's go and have a look. If the passengers have bags and they

have been loaded, Graham must decide how long he is prepared to wait

before he orders what is known as an off load, I can taing the bags off

to a-- taking a the bags off to avoid delaying the flight. They have

all got bags which means we might have to start looking for their bags

in a minute. We the can't travel with the bags on board. We don't

know where the passengers are. We have made calls and been on board

and they are not in their seats and there is 15 minutes to go and they

need to be here. Over at BA, Michael is faced with

hwhile a similar dilemma on a short haul flight to Amsterdam.

The passenger has three minutes to arrive at the gate. That's ten

minutes before departure. Any later than ten minutes, his bag will be

removed from the aircraft. He will be denied boarding and we'll depart

as per schedule. Five of the missing Virgin

passengers have shown up, but with two unaccounted for and only ten

minutes to go before depa are ture, Graham resigned dst, departure,

Graham has resigned himself to opening up the hold.

Let's get the bags off and we can We're going to go for the bags for

the last two passengers. We might have to put five or ten minutes on

Michael is also faced with a tough decision - with just nine minutes

until the departure, he should already have begun his off load by

now. Can we start the off load, please?

Bag off. On his way to the aircraft, Graham gets a call from back at the

gate. Go ahead. We have got the last two. Can we

accept them? Yes, you have got the last two passengers, yes, we can

accept them. No such luck for Michael.

The passenger has failed to show and his bags are being removed from the

aircraft. So we can close up here and aim for

an on time departure. Every bag is barcoded and tracked so

it can be located in the containers. Fortunately, that container was

loaded at the door. If it was loaded any further into the aircraft, you

take the containers off, pack it back and put them back.

With the offending passengers only just forward boarding, Graham is

running behind schedule. We are one minute behind and we can do this

still. One of the last tasks is to give the

captain the final loading figures. Yes, one signed copy, thank you very

much and I'll leave you to it. And it is clear to go, just one

minute behind schedule. Fantastic. Nice seeing you there.

Take care yourself. See you soon. Enjoy New York. OK.

S With the doors closed, there is still no sign of Michael's missing

passenger. I know he is a connecting passenger from Los Angeles. I know

his internal flight and the system shows he arrived in Terminal 5, but

he could be stuck at security. He could have gone shopping unaware of

the departure time. Rather than take the risk and delay 130 others k, we

I'm still with he Jeannine ---ing I'm still with Jeannine the Virgin

dispatcher. We have got 34 minutes. How many of your passengers have

gone walkabout? We are missing five passengers. These are mostly

connecting passengers. It could be because of the thunderstorm over the

channels. We have got a few of some of the transfer backs, are but those

were Virgin to Virgin transfer bags and the other European connections

we haven't seen those yet. Lots of people transfer through

Heathrow because of the terrible weather, they might be trapped over

there? They might be. You don't know yet for sure? We know

we haven't got their bags. They have not checked in.

How many passengers on this plane? 143. Is it full flight?The capacity

is 308. We have a few spare seats. So people have space to lie down?

They can move around if they want What's going on behind us? Graham is

the dispatcher for this flight tonight and he is just overseeing

the loading of the bags. Shall we have a look? He is conferring with

Keith. What's in the containers? This has

got bags. These are baggage bins so each bin is separated for a cabin

class. So we could upper class bags only in that bin. Premium economy

and economy. What about this conveyor-belt here? We have seen the

last piece of luggage go in. What was that? These are the transfer

bags. They came from the transfer area which we call the interline

area so all the transfer bags will be loaded on the belt loader. We

load provisions for the return so the blankets and newspapers.

What if you are at the gate and they look at your bag and they say there

is no way you are getting on with that bag or if you have got a

pushchair, what happens to that stuff? It will be tagged at the

gate. It will be a gate bag. That will be brought down by the loading

supervisor or one of the loading team and they will load it in the

small load area here. We load loose cargo in here and also our valuable

goods that we transport. OK, we will talk more about those in

detail. We have had a question from Michaela in Newcastle who says, "

How are pets processed through the airport and where do they go in a

plane?" Well, Michaela, you are about to see pets on a plane!

While the passengers disembark, this flight from Chicago, cargo manager

Ben is about to oversee the careful unloading of a shipment worth over

$1 million. A, had, that is cool -- ah, that is cool.

It is a C 6 R S Corvett. Where is it going? It is going to Le

Mans for racing. Off it goes to France.

Why would you choose to book something like on passenger flight?

We have a daily departure out of Chicago to London. A ship would take

three to four weeks. So it is speed? It is speed.

That speed costs money. Anything from 10,000 to �20,000 to air

from 10,000 to �20,000 to air freight a car.

Every year, close to 1. 5 million tonnes of cargo pass through

Heathrow. About a third of that, is flown on dedicated freighters, but

the majority travels on passenger flights like this. You never know

what straps in just a few feet below your seat. There is a concert in

London tomorrow, and the drummer had drumsticks sent over from Chicago.

Million dollar race cars and urgent deliveries for rock stars aren't the

only cargo that need special treatment. A few hours before they

fly to New York City, Hilary and Laurence are checking the rest of

their family in for the it flight. Hello Fergie.

She is just a love. She is a love. Whose this? This is Nessa.

This is the hardest part. We know it is a short trip.

Will your minds be on the dogs during the flight? Yes, nonstop.

What will you be thinking about? They are not scared.

Over 2500 animals fly with Virgin each year and Helen Evans is used to

dealing with nervous owners. How much of your job is about the pets

and how much is it about the owners because I can imagine they get

anxious? 70% is dealing with the owners and the anxieties and the

questions posed by them. Are you a pet person, Helen? I am. I have a

dog. Can you relate to it? I can relate and I can relate when the

dogs get stressed as well. You know, they are anxious and it is more of

annage anxiety of are -- an ang -- anxiety of separation from their

owner. Getting your dog to New York will

cost up to �400. They are security checked and driven air side where

the operations team loads them into a special animal section of the

cargo hold. All of the hold is pressurised and while the pets don't

get fed during the p flight, they get water and their section is

heated to the same temperature as the main cabin upstairs. While the

four-legged passengers get strapped in for take-off one of the handling

agencies is unpacking fruit and veg which are arriving on flights from

all over the world. The manager's job is to make sure every lobster,

mango and bunch of roses reaches their destination as soon as

possible. Broccoli. Peas and vegetables. Where has this come

from? It's flown in this morning from Nairobi and Kenya. It would

have been picked yesterday, processed in the factory and

packaged ready for the supermarkets. This will be emtie by tonight?

we don't keep anything here longer than 12 hours, in and out the same

day. By tomorrow morning they'll be on the supermarket shelves? That's

right The summer months mean fewer perishables get flown in to Britain

but it's the busiest time of year for holiday-makers jetting off?

Where are these going? To the Hamptons. Are they regular flyers?

This is their third round trip with Virgin. To the Hamptons every

summer. Not bad, fellas! Do they get air miles? They do, every pet

travelling will earn 1,000 miles for each trip they do. It's a different

world! All of this is happening under your feet, remember that. The

same flight as you. There's dogs Johannesburg but there is something

special on this one, isn't there? There sure is. We have a rally Ford

Fiesta racing car that the owner is transporting to enter a rally

competition in Johannesburg. Incredible. You can't see it because

it's packed in there with lots of other cargo and there's more still

to come on. There is a lot more to come on. This bin that we are

looking at funnily enough, amazingly, has got some salmon.

That's full of smoked salmon. The world loves Scottish smoked salmon.

Earlier we saw those tulip bulbs going on. Flowers, bulbs, we

transport as cargo, as well. We have all sorts. The vex we transport

What's that? Our expensive cargo. Such as? It could be a piece of

artwork. It could just be someone's telly that they really want

tomorrow. If I wanted to take my kitchen sink with me I could take

it? As long as you pay the price. That's the sticking point. Dallas,

how are you getting on with those doodles? Thank you. For any airline

the artwork on the tail is incredibly important for its

identity andification. -- - and identification. I am in the graphics

room. What are you up to? We have got Ryan and Harry there. They're

making the next stencils for the next aircraft. They're working on

panel E1 and E2 We don't use a stencil for the tail. You build it

up. That's right.The thing I notice looking at the tail is that you have

that kind of shading that make it is look as if the tail is actually

fluttering in the wind. How do you do that? With graddiated dots. Here

with small dots and goes large and small again. You are cutting circles

in the stencil. These are cut by a computer. They are having to pick

them out by hand. There is not a machine to do that. We have looked.

We can put a man on the moon but so far we have to work on this. This is

a little dentist's scraping thing. Not easy to see, you have to catch

it in the light. That's it. Pull that. Don't damage the edge. Well

done. How many of these dots are there? 27,652 of them.You are

kidding. You have your work cut out. For one plane? Yeah.We may be here

sometime. If you need some emergency dental work, I am your man! OK, let

me try one more of these. What was it 27,000? 27,652.You guys carry

on, I will be a while here! Yes, that's going to keep Dallas

busy for quite a few minutes yet, I think. Dave, you have just been up

in to the visual control room. How are things going after this tricky

morning as you described it? It was a tricky morning for the airlines

really. Connecting all the passengers and delays, but however,

the delay was only maximum of 30 this morning. The guys...

minutes? Up to 30 that time. The guys have been working really hard

this morning and this afternoon and the weather stayed away from us. We

have managed to more or less catch up now. There's virtually no delay

and no cancellations. That's astonishing. Presumably where those

thunder storms were really in a barrier against the sort of coast of

northern Europe, it wasn't just air traffic control here at Heathrow

that was affected, it must have been air traffic control - it must have

affected all over? I suspect Paris had a bad day today because of the

storms around there. For Heathrow when we have a significant weather

event and because we are 99% capacity there's a real iru there.

We lose two hours -- a real issue there. We lose two hours, it's

really difficult to claw that back during the day. At half past when

the last departure is still to go we still have a lot of planes.

Obviously the weather is beginning to change, it was getting blustery

out there. One of our viewers wanted to know what happens if you did have

a big electrical storm and it knocked the power out? Those

computers are vital. Yeah, but with have an uninterrupted power supply

and we have generators and fail-safe systems there to protect the

integrity of the systems. OK. I hope that anticipates your question,

Andrew. If any -- answers your question, Andrew. If you have any

questions to e-mail if you can do that. Now many people dream of

having a go at flying a plane and the ultimate passenger plane to fly

at the moment is, Dave? The A380. Guess what? Dallas did exactly that.

Well, sort of. This is the Airbus A380, the world's

largest passenger jet. Even the most experienced pilots have to spend

months training before they fly this. They don't start that training

near an actual plane. They do it somewhere like this, an simulator.

It's a replica of the real flight deck from the joystick style

controller, fully functioning auto pilot and even the emergency escape

rope. It's used to train pilots to deal with everything from basic

night landings, to emergencies they hope they never have to face in a

real cockpit. Oh, some geese! Stop. Dave Thomas, BA Captain, is in

charge of training, but today I am in the co-pilot's seat. Bring it

nicely to a halt. British Airways don't get the real A280s until --

A380s until next month. Could you fly full of passengers to Hong Kong?

It's exactly what I am doing. It's in my licence and I can fly but at

the moment all I have done is flown a simulator. So the first time I fly

an A380 will be with one of the training Captains and with

potentially with passengers on board because this simulator is so good it

simulates the real thing. All the little details from vehicles driving

around the tarmac to the ground crew make the experience as true to life

as possible. Most of the instruments in the simulator are the ones

actually installed in the flight deck of a working A380. On the line,

keep turning right and that will keep us off the grass. Sorry! Really

sorry I am on grass. I am still reeling about how realistic this is.

My brain is well and truly tricked. Will I talk you through it? Yes.We

are going to push the levers up a little bit and then we will pause

and we will allow the engines and you will see them here, and as we

are going down the runway use your feet this time, to keep the aire

craft on the centre line of the runway. The next thing that will

happen is the aircraft will shout at you, it will shout V1. It's the

point of no return, if you like. At that point it is safe to continue to

fly, than it is to stop the aircraft if we had a malfunction. Before we

could perform some kind of emergency stop. V1, forget it. Push. Two

clicks forward. That's it. Now just keep it nice and straight on the

runway. Lovely. Now it's accelerating away, doing about 60

knots at the moment. Coming up to about 80, about 100 100mph. V1.Take

your hand off the levers and then rotate. Bring it nicely up to about

12. 5 degrees. A little bit more. That's about - that's it. That's

Push forward now. Something's beeping at me. It's beeping because

we are supposed to level off at 6,000 and we have gone above.

The air space around here is crowded so in the simulator it's not a

problem but in the real world we will be departing London at 6,000

feet, there will be other aircraft coming in at 7,000, there is about

1,000 foot separation so it's really important that we are following the

directions we have been given by air traffic control. OK. Auto pilotPush

that button. There you go and auto pilot is in That's it for now. What

the auto pilot is doing, it is following the instructions you have

pre-programmed to the flight - the other main way of controlling the

auto pilot is by the use of the instrument panel here. What we can

do, for example, I could - this means we are directly controlling

the heading of the aircraft. Presumably I can go up and down?

That's for altitude. Give that a slide to the left or right. It's

well behaved, it does what you tell it to do. If I want to go back to

the original course? Push that in. ground. You might want to rest --

you might want to watch the rest of that film tomorrow when I try to

land it, gets more stressful. Behind me the guys are doing final checks.

Engineers are doing final checks. Hopefully we will be towing this out

in the next ten minutes or so. Before we do that we will catch up

with a -- with Anita. I am in the best seat in the house, right by the

cockpit and first-class. Why are we here, why have we ended up in this

part of the plane? This is the finalisation of this flight being

able to depart. We have the engineers signing off, the cargo

reps signing off the paperwork. sign off with the crew? With the

Captain. The Captain has to co-sign the paperwork and he takes a copy

and we take a copy to the office. The Captain has final say, he has to

see everything on the flight? to see everything loaded on the

flight. Hello, pleased to meet you. What is Graham doing? He's gone on

with the load sheet so that sheet actually has everything that's

loaded on this flight. Passengers, bags, cargo, fuel, and if he had any

off-loads he will also have to tell the Captain I had said there was 133

passengers, unfortunately, now there is 132 and minus a bag. That

last-minute change is an LMC, which he will take off. That's all

happening in there. It only takes half a minute, if there's no LMC,

half a minute to sign the load sheet and they should be out. Just had a

handshake. Graham needs to check the fuel. We have a question for you

from Matt, why do plane doors open on the left, is there a reason? If

anyone knows the answer to that one? It's universally standard. All

passenger board op the left, all cargo board on the right. It's

easiers -- easier. The flights come in and the jet bridge is always on

the left for security and safety. We know passengers are going on the

left. Cargo on the right. Lots of things happening here. People are

signing paperwork, engineers are milling in and out. Things are

really about to happen. This flight is going to take off when? In 14

minutes. So we could stay on and stow away. I don't think Kate would

forgive me. Thank you very much. That's good to

hear! I have heard a new phrase. It is called go around and go around

means when a plane comes into land and then does not quite and

literally goes around for a second attempt. Now we had a question from

Dave in Dublin who said, " Who calls a go around? Is it the pilot or

these guys at air traffic control?" Well, a few weeks ago, our cameras

were in the visual control room when a go around happened. This is what

Hello. Continue approach to seven left. Wind to 20 degrees. It is aing

tricky wind -- it is tricky wind conditions today. We have occasional

gusts up to 35 knots which makes it tricky for the pilots on a day like

today. Clear to land. The wind 2. 7

degrees. 18 knots. Gusting 35. degrees. 18 knots. Gusting 35.

No. Going around. ALARM SOUNDS

It was cleared to land and as he touched down, he was very unstable

and so the pilot elected to go around.

Verified? Roger. A go around is when an aircraft is not stable in the

approach or it could be that he has an insecure cabin. Somebody is

wandering around the cabin or a technical reason or the runway is

blocked ahead. So we will either tell him to go around or the pilot

will elect to go around. The issue for the departures controller is

that there was an aircraft which was airborne and it was going to takeoff

and turn towards that aircraft. So all we did was ensure that departing

aircraft was high enough, ie was going through 3,000 feet and the

plane was stopping off at 2,000 feet so we have 1,000 feet of separation

between the two of them which is our standard.

Sixth November Hotel. Cleared to land.

It doesn't go back into the stack. We get them back round into the

pattern as quickly as possible. It is put back into the landing system

and landed safely. Heathrow for every 1350 aeroplanes, it averages

out at one go aaround per day. It looked dramatic.

Yeah, it was pretty interesting! You don't get express stressed about

anything, do you? If you put a heart rate on me. It is a common

occurrence? Yes, over a year we get one a day which out of 1350

movements is not bad. I suppose, that's true. I suppose that's true.

There were two today, I gather? we had two earlier. One was caused

by the aircraft being unstable. So similar to the plane we saw in the

clip. And that's because of the weather,

is it? Or the aircraft can be fast on the approach. Having a strict set

of parameters and on that occasion, it wasn't and the pilot elected to

go around. The second one was an Airbus A 380. Heathrow is designated

as a hero airport, not because Dave Marshall runs works here. The pilots

hit safely, but as quickly as possible and in that instance, the

aircraft ahead of the A 380 missed his exit and was on the runway. Our

guys upstairs couldn't give it a safe landing clearance and they sent

it around. That must be tricky with a plane as

big as that? To be honest, it is the same no matter what the size of the

aircraft. It goes around and then through co-ordination with the guys

at Heathrow, it is brought back into the pattern. It is not delayed

further, but rejoins the system and lands about five or six minutes

later. I'm going to see if I can get your

heart rate up more and ask you tricky viewer questions. Cameron

Stewart in Scotland wants to ask "how does the change over work

between shifts?" You can't walk off and have a cup of tea a couple of

minutes early? We try not to. You can be sitting there thinking, " I'm

in control of this. I know what's going on." But unless you can

transfer that stuff over to the next guy or girl, it will fall apart. We

have a strict check list and the final thing is the traffic pattern

and we call it the mental map and it is only when your colleague says I

have got it, you flick the switch and unplug your head set.

So you will stay with them. You have an overlap period? There is a

handover and take-over and it is only when you are both happy that I

will unplug and go and watch Springwatch!

I'm delighted to hear it! Let's go back to Dallas and see how he is

getting on with his finishing Well, we are on the final finishing

touch. This is the nose landing gear door. We have an important stencil

to put on. We have got to put on the last two letters of the aircraft's

registration mark. So is it the same drill as before? Do I dab it over

the letters? Well, this is a larger area so it is better to roll it on

just like at home. This is like if I was doing around

my light switch at home. Of how much paint do I want to the put on?

so the blue is covered. That's about From we go.

This is the most stressfuling thing I have ever done! How does that

look? There is a bit of colour on the end there.

I don't want it to smudge. Do you trust me to pull off the stencil

now? I trust you! I will take my glove off. What's the

drill? What's the technique? Pull it off nice and slowly and take your

time and hopefully everything will be fine.

That's it. So there we go. This is the registration markings of this

particular plane. Pull this bit off here. You need two hands.

I will take this bit. If you can take that bit.

OK. There we go. There we go. Beautiful.It's coming.

It's coming. Whoops. Uniform Mike. There it is. Ready to

go. I'm going to leave you this. If I give you this bit to pull this

last bit off, Sophie, if that's OK. Oh, Dallas... I have got a smudge on

it. I will have to touch that up really quickly. Dave, I'm really

sorry, I smudged your plane. I'm sure we can put that right,

Dallas! You have got to get this touched up.

Take it away Gordon. What's the drill for taking a that

out? We will put tissue paper on that.

I'm sorry, I'm mortified. Gordon told the head set man to tell

the flight deck man, and the brake man.

We have a guy up there with his feet on the brakes? He told him to take

the brakes off. We have tooted the horn twice which tells everybody

that we're going to move the aircraft.

We'll come with you. We have a couple of guys on the wing. We have

a guy on that wing and that wing. Are they just making sure everything

Are they just making sure everything is clear? If you see the arm

gesture, it means we are clear. There is a lot of people in this

room. There is not always this amount of people, the people in the

Finning jackets are the BBC people -- pink jackets are the BBC people!

When will this plane be going into service? It is back in service at 6.

30, it is a stand-by, it is like a reserve. . That's quick though.

There is no sitting around? No. No, we have got to make these earn the

money. How long before the next plane comes

in? Midnight tonight. There is a bit we need to do at the hangar before

that arrives. The Boeing is the next one. We need

to change the strip and the processes, we need to change before

the aircraft comes in. So you never go to sleep? We never

go to sleep. It is a continuing conveyor-belt

like everything at Heathrow, over to Thank you, Dallas. We are waiting

for Bubbles waiting to depart. There was an issue for waiting for the

fueler... The fueler has to bring his final fuel paperwork for the

captain to sign off so he has agreed this is the amount of fuel. Has that

happened? The fueler signed off and he departed.

What's next? Graham has now handed over to the tug driver who is

talking to the captain. The captain is bait waiting for permission from

the tower to depart. Once he gets permission, the guys behind the

wheel, they will remove the chocks from behind the wheels and just

waiting for the fou we are to give us a -- tower to give us the

pushback (. When you have a departure time is

the time of the pushback or the time of departure? For most airlines and

Virgin, it is the pushback. 9pm is our pushback time. By the time we

pushback, we are on the taxi way, taxing, queuing up on the runway

could take another 15 minutes. I'm fascinated by the tugs. They are

so short and kind of mean looking, aren't they? To be able to push an

aeroplane backwards to help them reverse, how much does one of those

weigh? 25 to 40 tonnes. So they are very heavy machinery. And they can

do the job. Aircraft can't reverse, so the tug

has to push it out. How are we doing for time? We have

got three minutes before pushback! Things are actually happening.

flashing. What does that mean?That means everyone should move away from

the aircraft. The aircraft is going to depart. Everybody is talking.

We're waving at the captain. The captain is waving at the tug driver.

The people with the pou power now We can see you beginning to

pushback. The most important thing we need to know is what the weather

forecast is going to bring for us tomorrow. It is our final show and

you have all been working hard to catch up. Is that all that work

going to have been in vain? It might be spectacular by this time tomorrow

night. The trusty Met man told us there is a 30% chance of

thunderstorms over Heathrow which will give heavy downpours, but with

within the airspace, there is a 70% chance so it could be a really,

tricky day for our radar colleagues avoiding the therms.

Presumably for you, because the knock on effect will be obvious?

of today, we will be able -- we will not be able to land as many

aircraft. I hope the weather isn't as bad as

predicted. It is our final show tomorrow, but you still have time to

get your questions in. And you can e-mail us at:

We have got plenty of excitement tomorrow. Dan Snow is going to be

joining my new friends at air traffic control to see how good he

is at it T I'm going to find out from you in a bit, Dave. Anita joins

the Heathrow fire crew on a training drill that I have to say was scarily

realistic. Now, if you want to find out more about the airport and how

it works, you can do that through the Open University. Go to: