It will not only inspire friends of Boeings 747SP in a specially upgraded version. Marc Kirner, director of the Pratt & Whitney testbed, shows us this unique facility at Montreal-Mirabel. How are new engines tested under real conditions? They are attached under an additional small wing, called a “stub wing”, to the upper part of the fuselage.
His motto: “If we don’t do it right, we won’t do it at all”. At the factory, SWISS specialist Gian Caligari shows how to inspect all the core parts of an aircraft door during construction. SPRING BREAKĪn aircraft’s passenger door doesn’t only have to close reliably and be airtight: it must also be locked and opened by hand. The analog movement of the thrust levers, whose position always reflects the rotation speed status, adds to this: there’s no better way to feel an airplane. On the CSeries, the side-sticks also provide haptic feedback, which leads to a whole new feeling of being in control comparable to the classic steel cables of the old days. Movements on the side-stick of fly-by-wire controls generate electrical impulses, which are then executed by motors at the control surfaces. You look into happy eyes as soon as pilots talk about the CSeries’ cockpit design. One arrives very early at low altitude, which you then have to hold for a long time before touching down at the earliest possible point after an unusually steep angle of 5.5° instead of the default 3°.” NATURAL FEELING CPT Peter Koch: “On the final approach, you have to keep meticulously under the Heathrow’s traffic and at the same time glide over the skyscrapers of the Financial District. The reason for this is the unique descent procedure. “We’re much too high and too fast” has occasionally slipped from experts who watch the approach to London City for the first time. Peter Koch, chief of the A220 fleet and featured captain of this episode, is a stroke of luck: there is hardly a pilot who knows better about the most modern passenger aircraft in the world. While Airbus and Boeing are improving their “old models”, the CSeries is a clean sheet aircraft, developed from scratch in 12 years, even with some Swiss know-how. In the meantime, Bombardier’s jet division has been merged with Airbus, and the model was renamed to Airbus A220. BOMBARDIER OR AIRBUSĭuring filming in June 2018, the aircraft type was still called Bombardier CSeries. Built on the former quay walls of the Royal Docks, it represents a great challenge for man and aircraft not only because of its short length of just 1,500 meters but also because of an unusually steep approach procedure. In the heart of London, just 20 minutes from Tower Bridge, is a very special runway. Where clippers from all over the world used to haul goods, today aircraft take off and land spectacularly.
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