(music playing)
- Today I am at the world's biggest A380 facility.
Up to eleven A380 can be in-house maintained here
at the Emirates engineering.
And I have engineer Omar with me today.
He's going to give me a behind the scenes tour
and showing us a lots of things we've never seen before.
(music playing)
(machine noise)
I bet you haven't seen an A380 with all the interior
stripped out, just the floor.
That's exactly here what I'm seeing today.
(music playing)
Oh, wow.
This is definitely different.
The whole cockpit panel doors have been removed
and you can see the 3d copied is actually somewhere situated
between the main and the upper deck.
- And this is the maintenance of the three C check,
which we get all those items get removed
for either for overall maintenance, inspections,
repairs, modifications, and items replacement.
- And then you can see, this is the electronic bay, E-bay.
And you can see all these wiring directly under the floor,
off the cockpit.
And I don't know how many miles of cable there is.
There's huge here.
(music playing)
Imagine 400 seats used to fit here on this floor here.
And now they've all been taken stripped off
during this heavy maintenance, right?
- Right.
(drilling noise)
- So Sam, as you see over here,
we talked about the three C.
All of those floor, both were removed.
Just for the inspection and find the problem.
And now we are installing them back.
You can see the guys that are installing
the floor back in position.
- Why are you doing this?
- The first reason of that is to inspect the floor panel
itself, for damages, dents or delamination.
The other reason is to inspect the structure of the aircraft
and the, the seat track.
- The track.
- Yeah. The seat tracks.
Those are the seat tracks where the seats fits in.
- Yeah. I see the guys are manually screwing one by one.
This must be a massive job.
Taking all the seats out, interior out.
Then open every floor board to check,
and then bring everything back. How long this will take?
- It is. This will take maybe more than a month,
just to get it all removed and to instal it back.
- In the middle there is a, like a poll here.
What (inaudible) is this?
- Well, this is a lift, just to get.
- This is a lift. Elevator.
- A lift, just to transport items
from the main deck to the upper deck.
- Yeah, I can actually see, they go up to upper deck, right?
So this is the galley. They can move things up and down.
- Exactly.
I actually didn't even know A380 has an elevator
inside between the galleys.
(music playing)
Guys, if you've flown the Emirates A380,
you've probably remembered there's a staircase in the rear,
goes up to the upper deck.
And after all the panels,
all the laboratory has been stripped off,
this is what the bare staircase looks like.
Just like your home staircase, right?
(music playing)
They actually earlier, they stripped off all these beans.
Now they're reinstalling back to one by one.
- Correct.
- Oh, I see. I see.
- So the guys are making the final check over here now.
If any of these, just to get, get it installed back.
So Sam let's go have a look into upper deck.
- Yeah. Sure. Let's go to upper deck.
There's a lots of exercising. The hanger going up and down.
This is incredible.
Incredible how huge this aeroplane here is.
Omar just told me this is quite an interesting area
because at the first class cabin upper deck,
you remember there's two showers spa,
and now it's completely been removed.
I want to check out what's actually left over there.
- Yeah, I remember he was talking
about the avionics compartment.
This is the upper avionics compartment.
- Oh, we didn't know that.
- Yeah, over here, we're having
the upper avionics compartment, which is after the shower.
Which is nobody can see unless we get those shower removed.
- So would you like a glass of Mojito?
This is where normally the on-board lounge,
they serve you a drink on the upper deck
on the Emirates A380.
Now everything has been removed.
You probably don't recognise.
I'll come back to the old boar lounge.
And here's your Mojito.
- So, Sam, I don't think that area is what is this?
This is actually the platform of the first class seats.
And the seats should be installed over here. We get it.
Now, those platforms have been taken out of the aircraft
to do the inspection, overall repairs, over here,
and the seats have been sent to the shop
for the overall as well.
- This is really quite unbelievable.
You know, you have to climb up to this platform here
to reach the horizontal stabiliser of the 380.
Cause usually it's so tall and now we're touching it.
It's unbelievable.
- We are going on the top of the vertical fin right now.
On the view over there, you'll see the whole aircraft.
As you see it from the seats on cabin while you're flying.
- We're going slowly. Step-by-step.
This is a serious exercise.
Incredible. You can almost touch the tail for you, right?
Incredible feeling, having the whole A380 under your feet.
- This is the 10th camera, where you can see it on ice
on your seat.
It will show you the full view of the aircraft.
- I can see number four engine is removed.
Not often you see A380 without an engine here.
- That's right. Well, the engine got removed to do
that the overall engine, overall got view,
and we get it to shop, to the engine shop
to do the full overall.
And then the replacement of this,
we're getting a new civil engine, getting fixed over here.
- This is the GP7200, right?
- Correct.
- The engine Alliance.
- Correct.
- Yeah.
- Any idea? What's that box is?
- That grey box.
- The grey box.
- No idea. Just a box.
- That's the brain of the engine.
That's the controller, full controller of the engine.
- So that's the computer of the engine.
- Yes.
- Wow
- This is the air conditioning unit.
And this is the old one which had been removed.
And we saw the new one over there, which you saw earlier.
- Right, this is huge.
- It is huge.
- It's not quite like the home air conditioning box.
How many air conditioning system in the aviator you have?
- We're having two of those, two units.
- Two units, to get all of the air conditioning.
- Yes.
- Wow, amazing.
- So over here behind me, we're having the 380,
which is returning back to service.
Over here, we'll be doing the gear swing.
Gear swing is getting the gear retracted
and extended back again.
Over here, the engineer will be communicating
with the other engineer on cockpit,
to give him the command to start with this operation.
- That's incredible.
Like I haven't seen this before a 380 without gear.
It looks incredible. And now there are three jacks,
two jacks on each side, and one jack in the front.
They're supporting the 580 tonnes of aviator's weight.
Imagine you losing one pin.
It's going to be a disaster,
but we're going to make sure this doesn't happen.
- We'll be seeing the wind gear coming first.
- Oh yeah.
- The doors open first, all doors.
And then the wind gears coming out.
- I was under the wing first, wind gear.
- Yes, the wind gear.
- And then the buddy gears.
- Okay. That's eight, eight tyres.
And then there's two more here.
- Those are six, six.
- That's just amazing.
It feels like this is the best playground. Isn't it?
(music playing)
Tell me. What's the other system check you're doing,
apart from the gear swing.
- Apart from the gear swing, we need to make sure
that the engines are serviced and checked,
landing gear as well, lubricated and checked,
flight controls and internal cabin systems as well,
should be inspected and checked.
(music playing)
So we walk over here 24/7, for almost 1500 man hours,
to get each and every 380 back to sky.
- Wow, this is crazy.
Hi, how are you? Nice to see you.
- Thank you.
- I don't think we need explanation for the aeroplane sits.
This is where every (inaudible) want to come here.
- Yeah, we have a business class,
the first class and the economy seats over here.
- This is the economy, or first, business class.
- This is business class.
- This is actually business class.
Kind of recognise it. Honestly, like you removed the cushion.
- Cushions and covers.
- Took out the console, it looks like a economy class,
but there you go.
There's a business class seats.
Switches underneath, these are secrets switches
to play with.
- These are manual switches.
- Oh, manual switch in the business class.
- Yes.
- It's heavy. You know what I'm trying to do.
I try to still want to go home now. This really heavy here.
So I did a little detective work
and discovering things here.
These seats actually came from the aeroplane
we saw earlier while doing the heavy seat check,
where they strip off all the streets with just the flooring.
And each seat has a tag. They were originally,
this one was 23 echo. This was 19 Bravo.
So because the seats is slightly different, I believe,
in aisle seats, in the window seat,
and the centre pair seats.
- Business class shells,
we're going to send it to paint shop so that it gets
a fresh new paint. And then once it comes back,
we are again going to assemble it,
and make it look like a brand new seat.
- That's part of the heavy seat chair.
- Heavy seat chair.
- Wow, now it looks more like business class, right?
You recognise this shell here.
And this is where the suits come into.
I'm actually quite amazed.
This is actually the first class suites.
No one would've believed it. This is the shell behind.
And today I've really seen a lot.
- We completely stripped down the seat.
We check each and every details, the structures,
the integrity, the quality.
You can see down here.
These are the actuators that is actually moving
the seat to bed more when they're applied.
So all these undergo a series of tests.
- How long does it take to go through all the 14 seats
in first class cabin.
- It takes almost 14 days to complete from zero to 100%.
- Feels like a factory here. It really is a factory.
It's incredible.
It feels so different to the end product
where customer's sitting on, right?
This is just a shell.
It takes a lots of good care, maintenance, you know,
cleaning and also decoration to make the seats look
presentable and comfortable.
- Well, Sam, this is a sidebar panel.
This one is, it's a place for you.
We just want to show you how a laminate is bonded
onto the sidewalk panel.
- Oh, I see.
It's actually, this is the wallpaper.
- Yep.
- And then it goes into the sidewall panel.
- The composite panel.
- The composite panel, right?
- So this machine helps us to bond this lamination onto this
composite panel by heating the heat activated laminate.
- Oh. So when it got heated,
this thing will stick onto the sidewalk.
- Yes, exactly.
- Interesting. Never thought about even, you know,
we fly the plane we thought that was just came like that.
And we didn't know there were process and layers
and material behind.
- Once the lamination comes out of the machine,
this is where we do the buildup of the sidewall panels.
And we attach the brackets.
These are just trying to hold the bonding side retainers.
- And this one,
you probably have seen my first class video earlier.
This was the wall on the first class showers spa.
This is only on the Emirates 380, the showers spas,
also a huge bathroom.
- So Sam, let's go have a look inside,
see what's happening in return of service checks.
- Let's go.
(music playing)
- So I just came inside a 380 and see the guys
that work here changing cushion covers.
So these are new cushion covers you're changing?
- Yes, new ones.
- Okay.
That's pretty intensive job because imagine 400 sits
in the economy, changing one by one.
There's a lots of, lots of work.
Just imagine how many pieces things in the cabin
need to decorate and change, massive amount of work here.
- So, Sam, not only the bins that we check and clean.
Also we have to check on the IFE system,
we'll check the monitors. We check the communication.
We check the, the condition of the monitors as well.
The guys are preparing the carpets in a different station
and preparing for the removal of the old ones.
And the replacing gets by the new carpets.
- You have to test every single seats.
- Yeah. We have to check the operation
of each and every business class seat.
- That's pretty cool. I don't mind, I can help you.
I can change. I can check.
I'm going to be a seat checker.
I love to be inside of the aeroplane.
- Hi, Sam. Good afternoon. Welcome to our paint hangar.
- Oh, actually my first time in a paint hangar.
I've seen a lots of video of painting,
but I've never been inside of hang hangers.
Quite special here.
( music playing)
We all hooked up here. I guess, you know,
where we're heading.
We're going to see from the top on this beautiful 777.
I liked that whites and gold decal is actually a sticker,
right?
It's a sticker on top.
- It is.
- It is 50th UAE anniversary this year.
How long would it take to apply the sticker?
- This took us two days.
- Two days.
And then you just have this kind of crane and lift
to go near and you have to remove the old one.
- Actually, this is on top of the old painted livery.
- Oh, it's on top. Okay.
- Yup.
- But my question is normally in the paint hangar,
how long it takes to paint a 777 or A380.
- We do a 777 in 11 days.
We strip it to the bare metal and painted,
including the labour in 11 days.
- What's the process like?
You have to strip off the old paints.
- Yes, We have to strip it to the metal
and then, start applying all the primers and the top coats
and the clear coats and the colours.
And then we do all the detail, sanding and masking.
And then we started applying the new paint on.
- It's always a great feeling to see new aeroplane
with special colours as a plane spotter.
Hopefully you guys can catch it around in the world.
Cause Emirates 777 literally fly to everywhere.
(music playing)
How many litres of paints for a 777 like this.
- For a 777, we would use up to about 600 litres of paint.
- 600 litres. What about A380.
- A380 would be almost twice as much,
- Twice as much.
And you know, a lot of airlines,
they paint the planes just white,
which I hate as a plane spotter.
Some airline painted all black, right?
Is this cost the same, painting white, painting black?
- Material wise, it will cost the same.
There's no difference.
- No difference. If you painted. Only when you do a lots of,
lots of different colour.
- Exactly.
That's the look add the cost.
- Add the cost. Yeah.
- I see. Interesting to know.
(music playing)
What a day. It's amazing.
I've seen so many things that I normally wouldn't have seen.
Thank you so much, Omar.
But more so I also seen a lot of hardworking engineers
and technicians here.
Working 24/7 to ship, to make sure
the aeroplane are safe to fly for the passengers' comfort.
I want to thank them because these are the unsung heroes,
normally would never came on the camera.
But they're doing great work in aviation. Thank you so much.