Buy me a coffee during filming, thank you! www.paypal.com/donate/?busine... BBC documentary about a British Airways Boeing 747-200 in 1990. Flight 'Speedbird 9' London - Bangkok - Sydney.
likewise, it was one of the few, if only detailed aviation documentaries at the time. Me and a friend would endlessly discuss it at school. Look at what we have now on RU-vid!
Snap, same thing and i was a kid 12 years old. TV shows about the airline industry were far and few between then and being a fanatic I had to insist I watched this series causing some trouble with rest of people at home sharing the TV! I even recorded the 4 programmes. There was another series around the time called Airport 90 based at Gatwick over a summer weekend in 1990. I think it was hosted by Fern Britton lol
@@peterfinn6098 Now you mention it, I think I remember that. It was filmed live and broadcast the ATC of an evening flight departing to Paris, the pilot said "It's a lovely evening for flying" and then took off into the setting sun!
Yeah the Airport 90 was live over a weekend. I had to beg to claim the TV back then. They followed Dan Air quite a bit in the programme and its on RU-vid somewhere. I remember that clip of the DA flight to Paris too.
In 1990 I was a flight attendant for 8 years and it was a very relaxed era in aviation. From 1991 on, (first war at the Golf) turmoil started in the entire industry. And relaxation finally ended in 2001. I was very happy to retire in 2015 after 33 years of flying around the world without any serious incident. B.T.W.: do you know what FE means? No, not Flight Engineer, but Frequent Eater.....lol. And the era when Captains spend their layovers in a luxury hotel suite are definitely over.
BA were definitely the best of a bad bunch in the 90's.....and then EZJ came along and have evolved into a decent airline and the rest is history. I have never ( and never will ) fly Ryanscare though. Funny to see those old FA uniforms that looked like they were made out of old deckchairs.
And now because of NASA's PC bullshit hiring and trophy for tenth place mentality we can't even get into space without hitchhiking with the Russians LOFL.
@@CaptainArt777 what were the few problems?? The France crash wasn't the concordes fault as we all know...how long can a aircraft be in service till it hasn't got a choice to retire??? Just curious😷♌😉
It was sad to see that clip here in 2021 knowing both the 747 and Concorde are long gone from BA's fleet. Sadly 2020 marked the end of air travel for the masses, 2008 marked the end of easy money, and 2001 marked the end of life as we knew it. While I'm sure life would have been easier for many my age had we lived a generation earlier, I feel for the younger ones today who never ever got to see what this place was like before everyone was a disease carrying terrorist waiting to be 15 different genders and 30 ism's. Yeah we didn't have the latest autopilot, but everything else was better.
@@CaptainArt777 A few flaws don’t detract from the fact Concorde was an engineering marvel. The Sptfire had many flaws in it’s design yet nobody questions the fact that they were beautiful pieces of engineering
Service levels have dropped along with ticket prices. Certain airlines provide a scripted service which may seem like quality to the untrained eye or indifferent customer. This service is provided by underpaid staff working under conditions that no one in the west would find acceptable (e.g. women getting fired for pregnancy). To provide a genuine service, you need staff who are happy in their jobs.
@@vondahe service levels dropping is indicative of what? I feel its a combination of attitudes changing towards customers, but fundamentally its being "content" in a place of work. Can you expand on your point.
Rare scene of a captain strolling through economy. When I used to fly economy I never saw a captain but in business every flight you see and speak to the captain.
Wonderful video. My late father retired as a 747 Captain in 1989. He first earned his wings when he was 16 in Air Cadets, and after high school joined the RCAF for 3 years, initially was studying aerospace engineering, but missed flying too much, so joined the airline at the encouragement of my mum (great decision). He experienced a wonderful career.
The 747 runs deep in my family. 1. My late aunt was on the 747’s original design team. 2. My mother’s best friend died in the Tenerife accident. She was a flight attendant for Pan Am. 3. I myself am now a Boeing 747 captain (the -400 and -8; I’ve never flown the Classic).
The way the captain turns around when he hears the word tea at at 1:05. Also didn’t realise BA also trained their crew to be a drag act back in the day. 😂😂
Steve have a look at my video of Landor - her last landing and me walking around her. majestic to the last. She landed like a swan. Had me welling up. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-jCrL4dHot54.html ✈️❤️
HALON747 I know. These were the days when they used to take you to visit the cockpit. I went in the 747 and the Lockheed tri star twice. Got the flight rider certificates too, BA totally ruled in those days
Yep, as a kid I regularly flew on Tri-Star, and visited the cockpit during flight many times (late 80's/early 90's), you only had to ask in those days.
HALON747 When I was 6 years old the Pilots of a MD80 invited me to have a short look in the cockpit. Unfortunately, I was too shy then. That was a few days before 9/11. :/
mezsh where did you fly on the tri star? Did you stop in Middle East by any chance. I remember landing Abu Dhabi and there was nothing. Just sand and then a runway out of no where
Sam Pochin Hi Sam, yes, it was between Heathrow and Doha, Qatar (Gulf Air), I think the flight carried on to Abu Dhabi and then finally to Muscat, but I always disembarked in Doha. Yep, I too remember flying over nothing but endless desert for the last couple of hours. I lost count of how many times I went onto the flight deck during flight though, it was totally normal in those days, smoking onboard was too.
Wow. Amazing to think how different Flight 9 itself was a quarter of a century ago using those 747 classics. Now it terminates at Bangkok with a 777-200ER.
Absolutely brilliant and very professional Captain and the FO and Flt. Engineer. A job performed very well. Happy sailing with many more perfect touchdown. Thank you for this beautiful video.
Gabriel Cox it was the exact same plane? When they had the odd lights flying by the plane? I remember watching a flight disaster documentary about that flight. Do all planes keep their call sign / nickname for the entire life of the airplane? So "SpeedBird 9" is a perm isn't designation for this specific airplane for its lifetime?
Callsign "speedbird 9" is simply the flight number. Airplanes have their own registration number however airliners file their flight plans with a specific Flight number.
Remember watching this as a 13 year old on the BBC. As you heard runway 05 was still around at LHR. 747 in the Landor was stunning. Loved plane spotting at T4 with so many 747-100/200/400 parked up in unison. Cool Speedbird 9 is still the same service today. That Aussie controller is well bitter about pilots. Have a feeling he wanted to be one 😂
Yeah I remember the series too, i was 12 and a plane geek back then, i loved this series. Always wanted to fly long haul on a jumbo but now I find it boring and the service drab. I wish I had been able to try it out back in 1990 and the service then
"In the new machine age, those who work with machines are likely to be replaced by them" quoted here in 1990. I do believe that is prophetic. Any IT, software developers, or Network Engineers reading this will really understand that.
As of January 2022 ex British Airways G-BDXN and G-BDXM are still flying for Geo-Sky. They are one of the last Boeing 747-200 in civil aviation to fly.
This is so awesome - also around the time I took my first ever flight, a BA 747 LHR SFO - and what a first flight that was. I still love to travel, and have a review channel right on here, but there was something more exciting about it back then. Of course the airport experience felt nicer and the culture shock of a far away culture was way more intense and exciting. Great watch, thanks for posting!
Awesome video! It does a nice job of summarizing an intercontinental route yet also analyses the industry as a whole. I just checked now and LHR-BKK is still BAW9! I love British documentaries; they don't do them as well here in America. Thanks for sharing.
Correct... then they tried to cover their mistake by blaming the Ground Controller for wrong taxi instructions. Can't have BA pilots seen making their own mistakes. Good thing that aircraft had the best Autopilot.
I worked in London as a 22 year old Advertising exec in 1990. Had I seen this documentary at the time, things could have been very different with my career. Oh well!
RAF VC10 Captains back in the 1980s used to put on their hat & walk through the cabin and say hello to the pax.The Nav would use a sextant & would plot the course on a map that the pax would look at & pass around.I was RAF Cabin Crew 1984-88 at BZZ👍🇬🇧
Awesome video, I always use to fly, Lufthansa, or Swiss to Prague from Chicago with layovers in either Frankfurt, Dusseldorf, or Zurich. I remember it was always a 747 and my parents would send us to Grandma's for the summer and the fly attends would sometimes take me to the cockpit.
The accusations of the Varig pilots are false, they tuned the radios to local radio to check where they were, because they had gotten lost. Watch the air crash investigation episode on it.
You gotta admit, the -200 and -100 series had the best lines. The original upper deck proportions. I am already missing this aircraft in North America. No US passenger carriers use her. Dang I hate growing up!
Indeed the short upper deck make the 747 look amazing. Which is why I like the freighter version of the 747-400 & 747-8, but the pax version not so much.
I miss 747-100/200's I love the old analog gauge cockpits its what I always saw as a kid when theyd let me come in and see everything (back then it was common, sadly kids these days dont get to).
The route was London Heathrow to Sydney in 80's if I remember correctly. Captain Moody flew the 009, when aviation industry learn how voclano fire can be dangerous and helped the pilot identify it.
Wow - what a cool find - amazing to think this was 30 years ago and how new some of this was....no most of it is old hat....one thing that is not here is TCAS...which is another great leap in safety since it rolled out to avation........
So funny how times have changed! We are now in a world where joking around like 30:30 would result in the people fired, the company forced to offer sexual sensitivity training, and the company paying millions in lawsuits to the women who’ll never work again because they were so traumatized by that skit....
tempos Maravilhosos ! tempos dos Veteranos jatos 747-100 : 747-200 e 747-300 , DC-10 , Tristar : 727 DC-8 707 E 737 200 300 E 400. TEMPOS QUE NÃO PODEM SEREM ESQUECIDOS JA MAIS. PARABÉNS PELO VÍDEO.
The job does have a lot of perks but it is very demanding and it’s a lifestyle that means your job is other people’s safety. The level of work and responsibility that goes into this means a healthy salary is very reasonable. Unfortunately the job has become so devalued in the modern era, that salary’s are low or even non existent at times and this has a direct correlation with safety. I found it very rich of the Aussie ATC chap to complain about pilot salary. The work and effort and sacrifice that go into it are as much as any professional job out there. If he was so perturbed by the scale of salary, he should try to spend the years it takes training and then maintaining the skills to be proficient at a high level. The irony is, that in Europe at least, in some countries, an ATC controller earns double what a low cost or charter airline Captain will earn, with a much better safety environment safeguarding him, such as work time limitation, days off and other benefits. An excellent documentary but unfortunately the industry has changed in a negative way, so that what is still a most wonderful career is desperately undervalued in the current world of the shareholder driven market. Thank you
@@koogar77 First it was the Radio Operators followed by Navigators then the Flight Engineers. It's inevitable that automation will progress to replace pilots too with cargo flights proving the pilot replacement technology. Also... I've seen many a Captain and their tech. crew 'dig in' along with their experience & responsibilities, taking the lives of cabin crew and pax with them.
27:28 "It's a fallacy that the stewardesses make a beeline for the captain. I know. I try it on every time and they always say "fack off Ted". In fact, I haven't even had a wristy from one of them since I was a second officer."
Patrick Pendergast became an ATC because he failed pilot school. Boy is he a bit butt hurt! He doesn't realize that pilots get paid alot because of the responsibility that they have, the schooling they had to go through, the time away from home and missing family events etc! I wonder how long he lasted with that attitude! Great video of my favorite plane ever! Thank you! ❤
It's crazy to think that the airport they landed in, at that time, would've been Bangkok (Don Mueang) which is next door to where I live in Lak Si. All flights since 2007 from outside Asia land at Bangkok (Suvarnabhumi) and all flights that depart over my apartment are only LoCo like Thai AirAsia, Nok Air, Air Asia X and Thai Lion.
Flew on the 747 and 747/400 series in the mid to late 80s to San Francisco and Perth Australia, fabulous planes and I was lucky enough to be invited onto the flight deck on the Singapore to Perth leg so glad I did as it’s impossible now.
I feel real sad for the flight engineers who disappeared after the huge autopilot upgrade and upgraded flight systems. But still the 744 remains my queen. Wish i could fly it again like i used to in malaysia airlines. Ahhh the good oll days.
Richard i’m interested. Can you tell me more of you don’t mind. KLIA airport was my fav airport and I’ve grown up with it. Now it seems so dead. Back in the days it was thriving with MAS aircraft. Now just some few a330s and a350s with 737 for short haul. What do you mean with challenging? I’dd love to hear.
Two quick scenes I especially loved was at 4:15, the CONC taking the active and the Swissair DC10 taxiing behind the CSA IL-62. Very nice vid, thanks for posting.
