Behind the Scenes of Cockpit Filming

Hello and welcome to episode three hundred and seventy-two of AVTalk. I am Ian Pechnik, here as Gabe Lee, right here for what? It's my once a year appearance. Your y yearly, semi-yearly appearance? Yeah, I guess I manage twice a year. Yeah. Although you're gonna be on the podcast coming up again real soon. Oh yeah, it's in a couple weeks busy summer. It's gonna be for you and yeah, for all of us. A very quick reappearance. However, it'll be a very slow event. Right. Very slow flight. Don't want to give too much away. No. We'll be bouncing around. While we're going to be doing that in the US, Ila Berlin is taking place that same week. And it's shaping up to be a pretty great air show and a fantastic place to see, let's see, this year, 750 exhibitors from 37 countries between the 10th and 14th of June in Berlin . So they've got Lufthansa Group is going to have their A320 NEO in the special 100th anniversary livery. The A350 is supposed to be part of the flying display. You'll be able to go inside an A3 0, and they're going to have the Airbus Racer high-speed demonstrator, so that'll be pretty cool. And let's see what else. Ooh, the Leonardo AW249 will be shown for the first time at a trade show flying display. So that'll be really cool. And they also have a drone cage. I also heard that the beluga is going to be there. Ooh . So you know what we should do? We should send our colleague Sophia, who's beluga obsessed. Exactly. It would be wrong not to at this point. So I think we'll do that. She'll be there for the trade days. And if you want to chat with Sophia about Flight Raider 24 or just the Airbus Beluga in general, because she will be more than happy to do that. You can get 10% off the trade visitor tickets using code ILA two six underscore flight radar. So all one word on the flight radar, no 24 on that. So do that, go to Berlin or be in Berlin, get a trade visitor ticket and go check that out. Sophia will be there for us this year, and we've already decided that we're going next year. Absolutely. It sounds like it's a super fun event, and I'm really a little bit sad to miss it. Also, we should mention that Sophia will probably have keychains. Ooh, that's true. So if you've been angling for a Flight Raider 24 key tag for a long time now and you're anywhere near Berlin, that's what you should be doing June 10th through the 14th. We'll put a link in the show notes for that and on to the rest of the show. We've had a good week here in Stockholm. Jason is in Switzerland doing trains and ferries and cable cars and all sorts of things. But nothing that flies. He was above a glider in the mountains. Which was pretty cool. But nothing well, I mean he flew to Zurich. So I I guess that counts. So I'll he'll be back next week to tell us all about his deal on air Serb ia of all places, from JFK to Zurich via Belgrade. That'll be interesting. But we're here in Stockholm this week. We've got the annual spring meetup of the entire Flight Raider 24 team. We're sitting in the office before the team redescends on the office for an evening of revelry. So we should speak quickly before they all show up and and ruin the audio of the podcast. Yeah, we gotta get this done. That'll be okay. Let's talk about what's actually happened to this week in the aviation world and then we'll get into what we've been doing this week because we had a lot of fun in the air yesterday, and then we'll talk about what you've been up to and what you might be up to soon because there's some exciting stuff coming up that I think is gonna be super interesting to people. Let's talk about something that happened last week that we got a lot of comments on social media, and a bunch of people wrote in and said, You're gonna talk about this, right ? Yes, we are gonna talk about it. A popular YouT uber posted the ide a of how to recre ate cockpit voice recorder audio by reverse engineering the spectr al analysis that the NTSB includes in their public docket of an accident investigation. So they held the investigative hearings, so two days of investigative hearings for the UPS MD11 crash. Then, as part of the docket that was released for those investigative hearings, they included the spectral analysis of the audio of the cockpit voice recorder. As we've talked about before, the cockpit voice recorder audio itself is by law never released by the NTSB. It is by law prohibited to release the actual audio of the NTSB's in possession, the the cockpit voice recorder. But this proposed technical idea . It's just a reverse Fourier transform. I mean, like it's been around since the 1800s, or the idea of it has been. So this is not a new idea. But I'm not sure why this particular person thought that it was a good idea to do this. Because, as we know, if you propose an idea to the internet, good or bad, the internet will do it. Absolutely. And so a couple folks did and posted what is recreated audio of the final moments of this crew's life and posted it on the internet for all to hear. And the NTSB found out that this happened and took down the docket system to figure out what to do next. And so they've slowly been replacing the dockets to either not include the spectral analysis or somehow degrade that piece of the docket so as not to provide anyone with the ability to further go back and recreate audio. In the show notes, I have a very strongly worded statement that we're family-friendly podcasts. I'm going to read verbatim, but I'm just apople ctic about how somebody thought this was a good idea to say, Oh, you know, you could. There's no need. No. This does not help the investigation at all. It does not help this person's stated goal of helping other people understand aviation accident investigations better. It certainly doesn't help the family of the victims of this crash that not only includes the three crew members who are on the plane, but eleven other people on the ground. I'm throwing up my hands here. I don't understand how anyone could think this was a good idea. Same. Hopefully some folks have learned their lesson about introducing things onto the internet . Just because it's an interesting technical exercise, what I keep coming back to is Malcolm from Jurassic Park, where you gonna you were so busy seeing if you could you didn't stop to think if it was a good idea or not. Exactly. And I feel like that's the trouble that we've gotten ourselves into now. Yeah. Stopping to think is not a very internet friendly theme, isn't it? That's a fair assessment, I think, of one of the problems we've been addressing today in multiple ways. And maybe bemoaning that just a little bit. Yeah. But it's the sandbox in which we play. So I guess just be better than that and hope the people follow our lead. Oh boy. Okay. Moving on. We have a preliminary report on the investigation into what was just an absolutely bizarre video to watch. I think I shared the video with you when it happened or we we talked about it briefly watching this China Eastern A350 smash into the jet bridge , full reverse thrust, smash into the jet bridge again, and then reverse thrust again, and then smash in for a third time. So this is actually coming from the French BEA providing information based on the Chinese CAAC investigation. This was the China Eastern Airlines A350-900 in Shanghai. They're now saying that a complete failure of all of the brakes on the A350 were what led to the initial collision, and then the crew's use of reverse thrusts. This is a confirmation of what we talked about a few weeks ago when some information was shared via someone got a hold of the China Eastern maintenance logs that showed that there had been a full break failure. So they have a bit more information now. The Chinese analysis says that after takeoff, the crew received an inertial reference system fault. While carrying out the procedures to turn off that system , there were fault messages appearing related to the brake system, including auto brake, the accumulator of the green and red hydraulic circuits. So the aircraft was able to land safely, thankfully . But as the aircraft got off the runway, they started receiving additional faults for braking on all of the wheels. And then the total brake failure occurred while the aircraft was taxing on the stand. So the investigation will continue deeply to figure out how that it should not be possible for all of the brake systems to fail on the A three fifty simultaneously. Right. So something went very, very wrong. And in theory they had some braking to get off the runway. Exactly. They were able to decelerate off the runway and turn off the runway, but they lost all hydraulic braking of all kinds by the time they got to the jet bridge. Fascinating. So I guess better that that happened than to have no braking trying to break on the runway. Yes. But that begs the question and and hopefully this will be answered in the either a full preliminary report or the final report is how much of getting off the runway was due to the use of reverse thrust versus because normally reverse thrust is kind of an afterthought to how aircraft get off the runway. Aircraft are designed and certified to have no reverse thrust and still be able to safely stop. And in many cases, it's preferable not to use reverse thrust. Right. Exactly. And so this is an interesting if they hadn't used reverse thrust, what would have happened when they were landing and how much of it was due to the reverse thrust? Because then obviously they didn't have any brakes when they crashed into the jet bridge. So I think that'll be an interesting follow-up to see what happens there. Yeah. Let's talk about less destructive, but still not great news for the A350, because this is something that we've been excited about for a while because we're obviously trying to be a part of the launch of this whenever it eventually happens . The A3501000 ULRs for Qantas have once again been delayed. Airbus is saying due to supply or quantus and Airbus are saying due to supply chain issues again. First deliveries are now set for early 2027 . They were scheduled for later this year. One of the things that we will get to know sooner rather than later, next month in June is the initial route for when they're finally delivered. It sounds like they'll be flying between Australia and New Zealand to start as they get familiar with the routes and the aircraft and proof familiarization because remember these will be bespoke cabins that have all sorts of different things that you might not expect. Right. So primarily this will be kind of cabin crew training. Yeah, exactly. Cabin crew training. The A35 0 simulator training is up in full swing in Sydney and pilot crews are are getting up to speed, but this will be more m in situ cabin crew training, obviously pilot currency and all that good fun stuff. Right. Before they launch. What we don't know yet is whether they'll go to New York or London first, as far as the actual project Sunrise fights. Right. The more I think about Project Sunrise, the less I'm excited about it. And maybe this is just me getting older. I'm not sure I want to be sitting anywhere for between 19 and 22 hours. Like I first class, business class, laying on duct tape to the wing, whatever. I'm not sure I want that. It is a very long time. I've I've never actually done that length of flight or e even really close to it. I mean 17 hours recently I did that was my longest in flight ever. That's I mean it could be another on the longest day, it could be another five hours. That's another long flight. Yeah. Yeah, it's a lot. I mean I still want to do it, but don't get me wrong. I still want to do it. I want to do it less. Maybe that's just me being a curmudgeon legal man. I I don't know. But I feel like we can maybe set our sights on this for 2027 now. Yeah. I hope. Yeah. Let's talk about some shorter flights that we did this week. So yesterday we spent time with an amazing group of people at the Swedish Flying Veterans Association. These are the folks that operate the historic DC3 based in Sweden, DAISY. They operate all sorts of Swedish saw fighter jets that we did not get to fly, which fine, whatever, be that way. But we did get to fly in the SK-16, which our US audience will know as the Texan, the C six Texan. And we did well we didn't personally, but there was also the SK fifty, the Sophir, which was available to fly in. Oh, and the chipmunk, which our colleague Alex got to fly in . And because of some scheduling snafu earlier in the day, he didn't get to fly in the chipmunk until much later in the day, which turned out to be great for him. Yeah. Because he's the only one who got to do some aerobatics. Yeah. That looked really incredible. That sounded really incredible. I mean yeah, I'm very jealous. That was a lot of fun. We'll have by the time the podcast comes out on Friday, I don't think we'll have a full video done on the experience yet. So look forward for that next week on our YouTube channel, which Gabe is hard to work on. We'll talk a little bit more about that in just a few moments. But we'll put some links and we'll put a blog post together. Yeah. Of some of the best photos and and a little bit of the video from that. I think that'll be worthwhile. So that'll be in the show notes. But we got to fly on the DC three. And not only did we get to fly on the DC three, I was in the DC three for this. And you were in one of the SK sixteens in formation. Yeah. That was I've flown in the T6 before inform ation, way back when with when it was Team Aeroshell. And that was a cool experience. But to me flying in formation with two Texans in the D C three was just absolutely incredible. From my perspective as well, seeing the D C three like that, so close and in the air and also so flying through quite a few quite a bit of thermals. It it was a bumpy ride, yeah, for sure. There was a lot of if you were standing on the DC three during the f I mean you really needed to have some shock absorbers in your legs going to stay standing. This was also my first time ever flying in an aircraft where you could open the hatch. Yeah the canopy is able to just open it right up. Open air, just amazing. Great for getting shots, also because the glass, not so clean. No. So I had to try not to lose my phone out the window while also maximizing the clarity of the shot. That was a nice little exercise. And also I couldn't hear anything, my headset didn't work and it was bumpy and it was fantastic. So you had a suction mount, action cam GoPro or DJI, whatever. But so when I went up later in the day, it broke. And so I'll put uh I'll see if I have a picture of the floor well. But there's no floor. There are two foot rails for the backseat of the Texan. And you put your feet on those because it's a training aircraft. So in the backseat, you can fly the aircraft. So there's rudder pedals, you got a whole instrument panel, and if the stick is inserted into the stick holder, for lack of a better term, into the tandem flight controls, you can operate the aircraft. Wisely they had removed that for our flights. But when we landed, the mount just collapsed into the aircraft. So there's somebody somewhere got either video or a photo of me, feet up in the air, reaching into the basically the outer skin, all the way down there, trying to grab the camera. My watch breaks and and fallss down. There' some reaching down there. And it was great. So I hope that footage is good. Yeah, I hope so too. Because if the footage isn't good, I'm gonna feel really, really bad about that. Yeah, before we flew when I did the SK16, Anders, the pilot, w he said, can you make sure not to have anything unsecured like your phone or your cameras? Because if it falls down there, the controls for the rudder and everything go through there and we'll be delayed. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So after he's like, you need to get down there and get that. I was like, oh no. And then after I get everything out, he goes, Well, we got a grabby stick. If you want like, oh now he tells and covered in grease. Yeah. That was great. Yeah. He also strapped me into a parachute and didn't Yeah. What he told me when he strapped me in, he goes, Okay, here's how you do it, and if we need to get out of the aircraft, you just pull the harness off and then you go. And he goes, but we won't need to do that. I was like, okay, that's good to know. I'm glad that we're not gonna need to do any of this. That second flight was on because then we were flying in formation between the two SK16s. And that was a bumpy, because we did a low pass through the airport and that was a bumpy bumpy because it was full through it and that was I think probably the the most nervous because he did not communicate well that that's what we were about to do and then did it and I was a little nervous as to what was about to happen. Not like that anything bad would happen. I just didn't know what was about to happen. Yeah. Yeah. That was a bit of a thing. So stay tuned for all of the footage for this when it eventually comes out on the YouTube channel. But the other thing that we did yesterday, we both flew the Convair 340 Metropolitan. And that was an actual SAS these were not full motion simulators, but real aircraft that had been sliced behind the flight deck. Yeah. And big screens and and full thing and they put all these together and so we had to fly the Conver 340, which was an entirely different kind of flying than I had ever done. Real life simulator doesn't matter. Yes. Just my favorite part was the landing gear. Yeah. I mean, it was the woman that was directing us or captaining our experience, she was so passionate about the three four. I was it was great. Kept telling us how she'd fallen in love with the surplane. Yeah. Yeah. It was absolutely fantastic and super helpful because she was doing a lot of the work of making sure that I didn't crash into a mountain or anything like that. But the one thing so the landing gear, you flip out this handle because it folds flush against the center pedestal on the first officer side. And so you pull out this handle, and then it's a real solid foot-long steel aluminum bar that just th unk. Wow. And it's just like the just you get purchase and it just feels very official. Like one of those old school, like Frankenstein's monster electricity things. I loved everything about that simulator. I wouldn't have expected that that would be one of the highlights. So you're gonna need to do this with the the no and then when you throw it back, you she's like you gotta dive for the runway. Do not flare until you are ready to let yeah you have to. As you're nose diving, very counterintuitive. Yeah. Yeah. What is that? And then it's all of a sudden, okay, power off, flare now. And you just kind of come in. It was fantastic. Yeah. You got to do the DC ten simulator. Yep. I stuck around to do that one. That was cool. Funny enough, I thought I would prefer the DC ten. The the Convair was more exciting in a in a way. Also the DC ten was so f fascinating, but actually I found it more difficult to fly in some way. Actually, like it was maybe it was because I got used to that funky way that the Convair operates and then I was flying a a jet, which is you know, like a a lot more you can like lose track of altitude and speed much more quickly, for example. And but also very, very cool. Yeah. That was entirely too much fun. And I'm really glad we got the experience. And we say all this to say that you can if you make it to Sweden, you can actually do all we didn't do anything that's not open to the public. You can come to to Vester os and be at the airport and see the once a week Ryanair flight. Yeah. And also go fly these simulators and support this historic aviation. And not only that, it's a museum. Yeah. And they have oh, the heron. This story is fantastic. So there's a I had no idea that this was the last one in the world. So they have the last flying heron in the world. And somebody from the US has just purchased it, and their plan is to make it airworthy again. So this is the Haviland DH114 . And it's a unique looking airplane. We'll we'll put a picture. Jeb Photos has a couple of this particular one, and so we'll put a picture there of the flight deck. It's one of those things where the flight deck and the cabin are not on the same level, but there's no hump. So it's just kind of a taller fuselage. And it's a four-engine prop plane. And it just looks magnificent. So they've cleaned it up, they're getting ready to fly it again. And then the new owners are just gonna take it from Sweden back to America. And we're gonna try and be on that flight. Yeah. Whatever we can do. We will push it to the end of the runway ourselves if we have to. Yeah. That's fantastic. So follow this space for more. We've mentioned the YouTube channel a couple times. We bring it up from time to time in the podcast because there's a lot of fun stuff that you get to do that I am in absolutely no way jealous of whatsoever. Most recently, you were in the Caribbean with our colleague Sophia, who has just been instrumental in getting So what can we look forward to on the channel besides the the video of the DC three in the next few weeks? Yeah. I mean this chute was one of the more jealousy-inducing shoots. I felt bad actually a little bit telling people about what my next trip was gonna be. So it's mostly twin otter flying to nearby islands, quick flights to really incredible places and incredible on the aviation bucket list, like a couple of these experiences are they're doing them. Notably St. Bart's, which is an incredible approach if you've ever seen it. It's also been, we put it all over our Instagram too. You can see some of the sneak peeks of that there. And Sabah, which is maybe lesser known, but has the shortest commercial runway in the world. Also really lovely, beautiful island full of nice people. And then of course St. Martin, iconic, always. of K aind fascinating experience to see that in person, actually, for a variety of reasons. But yeah, Winair was amazing. They invited us out there and set everything up for us to sort of check it out. They even sort of liaison with local tourism boards to help us get a sense of the places as well. So it wasn't just pure flying, it was a bit of exploring too. Then we checked out their ATR operation, which is a kind of a newer side of their operation and growing. They're trying to serve more of the Caribbean, so we took a ATR out to Dominica, which has one of the most impressive, crazy approaches I've ever seen, actually, unexpected highlight, and out to Barbados as well and then back. So just a amazing four or five days. Yeah. That's fantastic. Yeah, and not jealous at all. No not at all. I don't know what you're talking about. Anything else that has been a recent highlight that you think if you're listening to the podcast, the next thing you should do is go to YouTube and watch this That's my favorite too. We were just talking about it recently and and it's a very special one partly because of the amazing access, what DHL actually was able to put together for me there to be present for all of the whole process of like checking out how the packages move through the facility, being there for the loadings, do what you want kind of thing within reason. But you know, I was just given free access and then flying through the night on this amazing A three hundred with an amazing crew. I mean it it's everything lined up for the perfect what a nice chance to like show this portrait of a piece of aviation that a lot of people don't see. A lot of people are sleeping as this happens. Yeah. Despite the fact that I was very tired doing it. It was so worth it and so great. Well, I mean, I was gonna ask you about that because a lot of the most popular videos on our channel, we were talking about a little bit about this earlier today, a lot of the most popular videos on our channel are videos where you're working you're night flying. It's either cargo overnight or it's long haul eastbound long haul overnight. Yes. And how does that we think about you know pilots who do it on a regular basis, but you don't necessarily do it on a regular basis? Does it hit you harder? Or do you think because you don't do it as often, you're maybe spared a little bit? I mean, I'm a wreck after that. And I'm glad that I don't have to do anything related to the safety of the operation in that situation. Because I will generally not have rested. I will I will not have planned for this in terms of, you know, like getting a nap in the middle. Well you're not doing controlled rest. You're doing filming yeah for most of the flight. Yeah. My job arguably less difficult, you could say, but requires a lot of focus and attention too. It's often for me it's still thrilling to do this, so there's a lot of adrenaline going through the thing of like, oh wow, I I get to be here and I get to show this and there's a lot about that operation that's so fascinating. So in the moment of doing it, it's usually good. You know, I'm with the pilots, I'm awake. But afterwards it definitely definitely hits me very hard. But there is that thing that we were talking about too that's so interesting where these night flights, especially the longer whole ones, but it happened on this DHL one too, which was you know not even it was Brussels to Milan, like it was a short yeah, European flight, but something about the intimacy and the coziness of a cockpit environment in the night. It just creates this bond where you also bring out that human side, human connections. Yeah. People kind of open up a bit more. That seems to be a constant. And I think it's one of the things that makes these videos successful. We get to show these pilots to this crew kind of their authentic selves in a way. You know, despite the fact that many people, for good reason, might come into a situation where a camera's in their face while they're doing their job feeling a bit guarded and a bit don't know what this is going to be. Right. In most of those cases, they really it doesn't take very long for them to kind of relax and open up and we just have this nice bond where we can just chat and show what they do and it's just such a beautiful thing. Do you think there's any part of that that's they don't have to look at you? They're often in captain seat, first officer seat and you're usually in the jump seat behind them. Yes. There's kind of a over the shoulder, does that lend itself to them being a bit more comf like more relaxed if they're you have to kind of get into a leaning position to it. Yeah. There are multiple elements there. That's definitely one of them. It's where, you know, they can be looking at a variety of things. They have things to focus on. They're not in the spotlight in this way where you would be in a traditional interview or when I hold my camera near your face and like you talk to me. That can feel very off-putting to people. They they would struggle to relax. I understand I would as well. But in this situation, you know, they're in their environment, they have their things, they're doing they part of their mind is on this, they're whatever the case may be, and they're talking to me and they can look around and it's a nice environment for that. It's a nice setup. There's also just that coziness of a cockpit at night. I think it makes everyone feel a bit kind of easy and and warm in a way. The lights and the sound even the the sort of rushing air sound is really nice. And yeah, being in that sort of even in on a short flight, then I spent say three or four hours with them. So that's much different than showing up and here's the person you're gonna interview and they have ten minutes with you and here's the camera. This does give them time to sort of disarm a bit and get relaxed with the fact of this camera being here, that also helps. That you're stuck with them for a while. Or they're stuck with you for a while. Yes. Yeah. And you all have to kind of get along because again you said it's not a big very big space. Absolutely. Has that ever happened where anyone's just been like, I'm not? We've gained access, worked hard with the airline, gotten a cruise sign-off, and even then someone's like, I'm not. Yeah. It's never been a full I'm not participating or I don't want this. But there is often I would say one pilot in the mix who is just not into it particularly. And they'll take part, they'll show things. They generally are not fully blocking me out, but they might say like listen, I just don't want to be filmed right now, like as I do my thing or when they eat their meal or something like that. Totally understand that. Yeah totally fair. Totally fair. No that's actually why I'm here. I'm only here to film your meals. People want the food photos, yeah. Yeah it's it's really interesting. Sometimes will happen that there's usually one that has a a less of kind of is less excited about being in it. But it's not outright against it. That will have ideally been sort of sorted out before the fact. But I have had it where a crew just like didn't even really know what was happening that evening. They had heard that someone was coming and they're like, I've gotten on board and they're like, so what are we doing here exactly? Whatever you want. Yeah, exactly. And it actually often turns out great. I mean I think a lot of pilots like when they realize that I'm not out to get them, I'm not sort of looking for sensational hearing. I just want to see what you do and hear about it and what you think and like look at the process. They actually realize this is a kind of a nice chance to show what I do. And uh to a lot of people I've had a lot of comments where a captain has said my family actually could s really see what I do for the first time because like this shows it. I can tell them about it but it's not the same. I had never even thought about that that they can I mean I know that some airlines have used the videos that you shot for training purposes, but that's a whole new angle of like look what your parents do at work. Yeah exactly. That's awesome. Yeah. Well we're gonna get ready for some revelry here in the office. So let's call this an episode. Gabe, thanks so much for coming on. Semi-yearly. Yeah. Although you'll be on in in just a few weeks again, and I'm really looking forward to that. We'll have more to talk about that in the coming weeks. And we'll be asking some hard-hitting questions about nomenclature. What is this thing called . And why. And just how rigid is it. Exactly. And just how rigid is it. This has been episode 3 72 of Av Talk. I am Ian Petnik here once again with, I'm Gabley. Sorry, I have