PARIS AIR SHOW, LE BOURGET, FRANCE: 17 JUNE 2003
The burly security guy strides up to me, shoves a hand in front of my lens, and mutters into his sleeve. It’s not a good start.
Today we begin filming the story of the biggest civil aviation project ever, and first impressions are unsettling. Never have I had such doubts at the start of a film, never have I felt so out of place. These people are scary. A-list businessmen are like movie stars: perfectly turned out, used to getting their own way at all times, positively reeking of power. Here at Europe’s premier air show, Airbus executives want to show the world that they are running a slick, super-efficient operation engaged in a big, high-technology programme. The last person they or their bodyguards want to see is me, a scruffy long-haired film-maker with an altogether different agenda.
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I have been asked by the UK’s Channel 4 and US cable operator The Learning Channel to make three films following the project until the first flight. My mission is to get inside the programme that is building the biggest airliner ever. We have talked the company into granting us access, but it’s clear they are not used to sharing their troubles with outsiders. It all sounded so good in London, but now I’m not so sure. If I’m to show the human face of this story, I’ll have to get close to some humans. So far, monkeys with microphones in their cuffs is as near as I’ve got.
LONDON: 23 JULY 2003
I’m writing the detailed outline for the first film. It’s brilliant, even if I say so myself. The A380 will be built in the traditional Airbus way – that is, in several different places at once – and it makes for a gripping story. The wings are made in the UK, much of the fuselage and the tail fin in Germany, the cockpit and the rest of the fuselage in France, and the tail cone and tailplane in Spain. These huge parts will then begin a series of journeys by barge, ship, truck and plane to the final assembly line in Toulouse, in south-west France, where everything gets bolted together. The script is full to bursting with knife-edge jeopardy, talkative engineers stressed to the core, high technology beautifully explained, stirring music. The broadcasters love it. Privately, I’ll believe it when it’s in the can.
TOULOUSE, FRANCE: 2 OCTOBER 2003
How am I going to find my characters when there are about 10,000 people working on the plane? How am I to get “behind the scenes” when it takes a week of negotiation to get a 2-hour factory tour chaperoned by a tight-lipped PR? And then there’s the scale of the thing – and I don’t just mean the plane. I’ve finished a drawn-out tour of the various factories, and after a while I begin to suffer from “gigantic fatigue”. Oh yeah, another massive new factory, big enough to hold 23, or is it 25 football pitches (soccer or American? Make a note to find out). A $40 million ship, custom-built in China to transport the sections from Wales, Germany and Spain? Just a drop in the ocean. A brand-new piece of road, carved through gorgeous French countryside? Small è. The logistics involved in carrying this giant kit of bits to the monumental factory in Toulouse is simply awesome. I’m hoping that somehow I’ll manage to fit all this hugeness into the corner of people’s living rooms.
BROUGHTON, FLINTSHIRE, UK: 17 NOVEMBER 2003
The A380’s wings are designed and built by Airbus UK. Despite their unofficial motto “without us, it’s just a bus” they’re a camera-shy bunch, even by Airbus standards. However, at last, there’s some real action. Today they lift the first starboard wing out of the 60-metre steel-framed jig in which it has been assembled. The engineering is amazing. The inner ribs are machined from billets of aluminium, losing most of their mass in the process. A third of the other ribs are carbon fibre, progressing from surfboard size to boardroom-table size as you get nearer the fuselage. The smaller ones are so light you can lift one end with finger and thumb. The skin is built of enormous aluminium panels up to 34 metres long, and 8 centimetres thick in places. Put together standing on its rear edge, it looks more like the hull of a ship than the wing of a plane.
The design has taken seven years to complete, and features a greater angle of sweep than is usual for airliners. This minimises high-speed drag but makes the wing harder to build. Limited to an 80-metre span by the constraints of the world’s airports, the wing has been given a pronounced “gull wing” bend, to maximise the lifting area. And incredible though it seems just looking at it, this huge structure is designed to flex by up to 9 metres at its tip.
Preoccupied by the risky business of craning this giant 30-tonne, 36-metre structure across the factory, the guys in charge are starting to drop their guard and sweat visibly on camera. As the wing is laid down, everybody is standing around, slack-jawed at its sheer size. And this is just one wing. Perhaps filming will get easier from now on.
TOULOUSE: 24 NOVEMBER 2003
Richard Branson is at Airbus HQ to discuss the six planes he has ordered for his Virgin airline, and I take the opportunity to interview him. With typical candour, he walks around a mock-up of the plane’s 65-metre fuselage and says “It’s fucking incredible!” on camera. What I had not counted on was the presence of one John Leahy, chief commercial officer for Airbus.
Leahy is one of the scary guys I saw at Le Bourget, a board member totally focused on the company, determined to seize every opportunity to put one over on arch-rival Boeing. He insists on standing right behind me as I try to get Branson to elaborate on the risks this huge project poses for both Virgin and Airbus. Senior executives don’t usually like to talk about potential pitfalls; they’d much rather talk up the grand dream.
The PR people from both organisations are wound tight, but Branson judges the situation perfectly. He rams home the fact that Airbus has got to perform, that Virgin is placing huge faith in its planes, and that they had better not be overweight when everything is said and done.
Afterwards, Leahy, who as it turns out loves fighting talk, shakes me by the hand, congratulating me on my interview technique. It’s a turning point. I’m now officially John Leahy’s best friend.
TOULOUSE: 16 FEBRUARY 2004
Today we are filming at a facility called the Iron Bird. It’s nothing less than the entire electric and hydraulic guts of the A380 laid out in a giant room, connected to a cockpit simulator. It allows the company to test all the systems of this hugely complex machine using real, production-grade parts. The Iron Bird is needed because the A380 will be the first commercial airliner to use a networked system, basically an intranet, to allow all the computers access to a common, plane-wide data bus. If a passenger in seat 126B wants to switch on the reading light, for example, a microprocessor in the light switch sends a signal over the net to the cabin control computer, which then broadcasts a message for reading light 126B to turn on. Light number 126B gets the message and switches itself on, and passenger 126B gets to read the copy of 91av they bought at the terminal.
The same technology allows Airbus to change the flight control software remotely, even if the plane is on the other side of the world and far from a service centre.
HEATHROW AIRPORT, LONDON: 17 MARCH 2004
Heathrow has the builders in, widening the taxiways for the new arrival, due in a little over two years. They are spending masses of money, even though the new plane is advertised as being compatible with existing airport infrastructure. As we film the diggers working, 747s thunder down the runway just metres away, and it’s suddenly obvious that something more efficient than this 40-year-old design is needed. Maybe I’m becoming “embedded” and losing my objectivity, but the jumbo jet is starting to look a bit old, a bit 1960s. Perhaps it’s only because the plane has never had any competition that it still seems contemporary, like a Morris Oxford in Mumbai.
HAMBURG, GERMANY: 23 MARCH 2004
Another day, another vast factory. Here they are putting the finishing touches to three of the fuselage sections. The triple-decker layout is now clear to see, with two passenger floors and one for cargo. Since the A380 is basically two wide-body jets stacked on top of each other but only has a single cargo hold, the designers had another challenge: finding space for all that luggage. The solution is to fit large overhead bins and minimise the space taken up by everything else.
Although the plane is the largest ever, the wiring, the air conditioning, the fuel and hydraulic systems are crammed into an amazingly small space. This intricate packaging was made possible by iterative three-dimensional computer modelling. To begin with, the air-conditioning people, for example, were given a block of virtual space within the airframe in which to put their equipment. They then refine and further refine the three-dimensional layout of the parts, freeing up space here and there which might be given to somebody else’s system, say hydraulics. After thousands of these cycles, the plane’s intestines look positively organic, having “grown” all at the same time, making use of whatever space becomes available.
ROLLS-ROYCE, DERBY, UK: 29 MARCH 2004
We are here to film the engines in their final stages of assembly, and it’s becoming clear why each one costs as much as a tonne of gold. The fan blades, tri-directionally curved, hollowed-out slabs of titanium alloy well over a metre long, are works of art. When running at 3000 rpm, each one will have to withstand a centrifugal force on its tip equivalent to the weight of a railway locomotive. They must be able to cope with this stress for thousands of flights, and also be capable of dealing with flocks of stray birds ingested at high speed.
In a few months, we are hoping to be able to film the crucial “blade off” test, in which a blade is deliberately released using explosives with the engine at full power. On extremely rare occasions, blades do come off in service, and the safety authorities must be satisfied that any resulting debris is contained within the engine casing. Although it has never had an engine fail this test, Rolls-Royce has never allowed it to be filmed for television. But I have high hopes.
BROUGHTON: 5 APRIL 2004
The transport story is under way. While the first fuselage sections leave by ship from Hamburg in northern Germany, the left-hand wing starts its journey from the Broughton factory in north Wales to Toulouse.
First it has to be carried from the factory to the nearby river Dee aboard a computer-controlled 96-wheeled low loader. There it is loaded onto a purpose-built barge, and sailed down the tidal waterway under three low bridges to a deep-water dock 20-plus kilometres downstream at Mostyn. There it will be loaded onto an ocean-going cargo vessel (the custom-built ship is still being finished in China) and carried through the Irish Sea and the Bay of Biscay to the French port of Pauillac. From there it will be loaded onto another purpose-built barge and sailed 100 kilometres up the Garonne river, past Bordeaux, to a brand-new dock where it will be loaded onto a specially made trailer. A 600-brake-horsepower Mercedes tractor unit then hauls it the 245 kilometres to Toulouse over a mixture of heavily modified public roads and brand-new highway.
Back in Broughton, we film interviews with the Airbus people in charge and the barge captain, and it’s clear they are nervous. We have just been treated to the sight of the tidal bore rushing up the river, a 30-centimetre-high surge of white water, and have no problem believing them when they say, “It’s not to be messed with, this river.” With admirable bravado, they ride the tide as it courses back downstream, clearing the lowest bridge by exactly 50 centimetres, and carry on to their destination, right on schedule. I’m now beginning to believe this thing might actually work.
SHOREHAM, WEST SUSSEX, UK: 6 APRIL 2004
This is what I love about my job. I’m strapped into a two-seat Cessna and we are off ship-hunting in the English Channel, trying to get a shot of the CEC Century as it steams west for a rendezvous with the wings at Pauillac. In its hold are the front and rear fuselage sections from Hamburg.
The weather is beautiful, and we find the ship easily, carving great circles above it as the sun sets in its path. It’s one of those moments when flying seems the most magical and yet natural of things, and I envy those who do this all the time. As we turn for home, it’s sobering to think that the A380’s rudder laid on its side would be longer than the wing span of the plane I’m in.
TOULOUSE: 7 APRIL 2004, 2 AM
I’m filming the arrival of the largest Airfix kit in history, and there are a few tears amongst the overtired engineers. The last stage, through the village of Levignac, was fairly stressful, but made for a great bit of footage. Strapped onto massive trailers, the enormous fuselage sections squeezed through the village centre, missing buildings by centimetres and towering over their modest roofs. Although it was nearly 1 am, a big crowd turned out to cheer, and the atmosphere was electric. I’m feeling pretty good too, knowing I have my first film in the can.
DALLAS, TEXAS: 27 APRIL 2004, 2 PM
My mouth is dry, and I’m fighting to keep calm. I’m about to direct a true A-list movie star, one of the most powerful people in Hollywood. Over the last few days, it’s all gone a bit weird. The American broadcasters have decided that it’s not enough to have the biggest airliner ever. What it needs is sexing up a bit, a bit of glamour. So they’ve paid John Travolta (John Travolta!) an extraordinary amount of money to host each of the three films, and we are here in Dallas to shoot Mr Saturday Night Fever himself. In 5 minutes he’s turning up complete with retinue (two make-up/wardrobe ladies, bodyguard, advisers, lawyer) and I’m going to have to tell him and the movie-spec crew what to do. We have just 2 hours to get it all done. I’m a documentary maker, I don’t do megastars. I wrote the script at my kitchen table three days ago, and here I am, about to get Travolta to speak my words. I feel slightly sick.
DALLAS: 27 APRIL 2004, 6 PM
It all seemed to go well. I’m shattered, but I have it on good authority from the lawyer that “John” was happy. That’s good enough for me.
TOULOUSE: 5 MAY 2004
They are joining the plane together at last, and it’s impressive stuff. The technology is a major departure for Airbus, because until now all its planes have been assembled in fixed jigs. With the old system, the accuracy with which the plane is assembled, and so its aerodynamic efficiency, depends on the accuracy of the jig, and that varies with temperature. With the A380, everything floats in space, the parts held by huge remotely controlled hydraulic jacks. Reflectors are mounted on the components, and lasers scan their positions, allowing the engineers to place the components to within 1 millimetre in any axis. Impressive stuff.
TOULOUSE: 7 JUNE 2004
It’s very nearly a year since we started this project, and today we get to see the complete plane for the first time. I have spent a tough month editing the first of the three films. Apart from a few small difficulties, it went together pretty well. And so did the plane. Bolting on the wings was fascinating. Each wing is mated with a flange sticking out from the fuselage. Once the alignment has been checked and rechecked with the lasers, holes are drilled through the skin of the wing where it overlaps the flange, and hundreds of titanium flush-headed bolts are fitted and done up tight. It seems extraordinary that the overlap between the wing and the flange is only 15 centimetres. Yet the joint is strong enough to hold not only the weight of the wing and the vast engines hanging from it, but also the even more substantial loads in the other direction when the plane is flying.
Finally, the A380 rolls out of the major component assembly hall. Two things strike me about the plane. First, from a distance, it doesn’t look that big. Its proportions are similar to those of any airliner, just a bit chunky in the body. Get close though, and it’s jaw-droppingly massive. At one point I was filming it with a wide-angle lens, comfortable with the picture in the black-and-white viewfinder. When I looked up, though, I nearly fell over with the shock of seeing this staggering machine leaning over me like some giant metal seagull. Second is the noise the 22 tyres make as they roll over the concrete apron. They creak and moan and squeal as they carry hundreds of tonnes of aircraft into the truly vast equipping hall, where all the rest of the stuff, 800 kilometres of wiring, engines, hundreds of computers, the toilets, will be installed. The equipping hall is a single space that can hold three A380s side by side, and it will be my home base for a very, very long time.
HUCKNALL, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE, UK: 26 JUNE 2004, 8 AM
You can film people installing wiring for only so long before it gets a bit boring, so I’m glad to have something else to shoot. Today, after much wrangling, we are to be allowed to shoot the blade-off test at Rolls-Royce. Well, kind of. We are actually allowed to film a room full of engineers watching a TV screen in a building 200 metres away from the soon-to-be-destroyed engine. It doesn’t sound promising, but we have been assured we can have access to RR footage of the event itself, and no amount of arm-twisting can get us any closer. As they keep reminding us, this is the first time they have ever allowed a film crew to witness such an important test.
One of the huge fan blades, painted in garish rainbow stripes, has at its root a small explosive charge. With the engine at 100 per cent throttle, the charge will be detonated. The next few milliseconds are critical, not just to RR but the whole A380 project. No large parts must make it through the titanium case that surrounds the fan. I’m told to expect a big bang as the high-pressure stage of the engine decompresses suddenly.
HUCKNALL: 26 JUNE 2004, 1.30 PM
That was extraordinary. After a lot of hanging around, the engine was started and we could hear it quite clearly in our room. The tension began to build. After 5 minutes of idling, the engine was brought to full power, a sound I can only describe as a deep screaming. It made my blood run cold. Then, after what seemed an age, it happened. A massive thump in the chest, so massive that the camera in my hands jumped a good 15 centimetres. The whole room seemed to move, and many of the engineers leapt out of their seats.
As it turned out, we were in the ideal position for filming: I watched the expressions on the faces of the Rolls-Royce team leap from expectancy to relief to celebration in a split second. The test was a success: nothing would escape to damage the plane’s fuselage.
OAKVILLE, ONTARIO, CANADA: 28 AUGUST 2004
We are here at Goodrich, maker of the main landing gear, for another vital test. In a massive steel tower sits one of the body gears, a six-wheel, 6.5-tonne giant, hewn, like the fan blades, from titanium.
Its structure is fairly simple. A large compression strut, much like a supersize car shock absorber, is attached to a bogey that carries the six wheels. As ever, it’s the scale that amazes. This one gear, we are told by the proud PR, could support more than the weight of an adult blue whale. The test involves mounting the gear to a heavy sliding cradle, winching it up inside the tower, spinning the wheels in the reverse direction (to simulate the 320-kilometre-per-hour landing speed) and dropping the whole assembly onto concrete blocks equipped with pressure pads.
The violence of the impact is hard to describe. As I review the smoky footage from the small cameras I’ve rigged to shoot the test, it strikes me that after the A380 enters service, this will happen day in, day out, at airports the world over, and no one will even notice.
TOULOUSE: 18 JANUARY 2005
Today is the grand unveiling of the plane in front of the world’s press, and Airbus is buzzing. In a grand but rather strange ceremony that involves dancers and lasers and dry ice, the story of the A380 is told after a particularly French fashion. Then up come the lights on the machine itself. The event is the lead story around the world. Now everybody knows about the plane, and the pressure on the engineers goes up a notch.
TOULOUSE: 6 APRIL 2005
The six members of the test crew turn up to take charge of the plane. They look like a bunch of history teachers but they are treated like superstars at Airbus, and with good cause. They have 176 years’ test flight experience between them. It takes a certain kind of sangfroid to pilot an aircraft on its first flight, but this plane needs sang-extra-froid.
Flight-test director Fernando Alonso will be sitting in the back of the plane at a bank of computers, monitoring the comprehensive flight instrumentation. The output from strain gauges, temperature and pressure sensors, and of course all the flight control movements are fed to banks of computers that record thousands of channels of data. Checking for anything that may have been overlooked, Alonso discovers that the cabin lighting has been disabled, and I see the clout of the test department in action. After lots of scurrying about, the engineers get the system to work and the plane is handed over.
TOULOUSE: 27 APRIL 2005
The big day dawns bright, warm and sunny. I can hardly believe that the plane I have watched grow for nearly two years will actually fly today. Thousands line the airport’s perimeter. The pilots seem calm, focused. They put on their life jackets and parachutes with hardly a word. We leave the plane after filming their final preparations, our cameras still running on board. I wish Fernando good luck and he just smiles excitedly, like a small boy about to get on a funfair ride.
The engines scream their deep scream, the A380 speeds down the runway, and suddenly, perfectly gently, it embraces the sky.
I only wish I had seen it. I had my back to the plane, filming the Airbus moguls in their moment of triumph.
