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