Ultimate Airport Dubai

In this episode it's raining in the desert and Myles is faced with

a damaging leak.

Oh jeez, that is bad.

Jo tries to reason with a stressed out tour guide before the

entire group miss their flight.

Sorry, excuse me. No, no, no. I'm trying.

Don't talk to me. I can't listen to everyone at same time!

OK, OK, OK.

And unless Leigh fixes a plane fast it will delay hundreds of passengers.

Somebody talk to me, turn the engine off, kill it.

Dubai International Airport, the busiest global hub on the planet.

Staying on top takes a crack team.

No one else in the world is doing it, but everybody else in the

world is watching us.

Paris, Hamburg, Munich.

I think it might be a nightmare shift.

It is very dangerous because it can explode at any time.

This concourse will help Dubai Airports stay number one.

It's the job of 90,000 staff from all over the world to make this,

the ultimate airport.

Around the world weather has a huge impact on air travel.

Wind, rain, fog and storms disrupt complex aviation networks every day.

And bad weather elsewhere, can also have an impact in Dubai, challenging even

the smoothest of operations.

Stand by one second, I can clarify that with NCC quickly.

As vice president of Emirates network control Georg is responsible for all

Emirates flights across the globe.

He and his team manage up to 230 planes at once.

Network control, Peter, Good Morning.

Georg's right hand man Peter takes a call.

It's the pilot of an A380 on a ten hour flight from Shanghai inbound to Dubai.

303, pull up 677 Charlie please.

Network control can talk to any Emirates flight deck almost anywhere

in the world at any time.

303 will call them back now.

They're going to call him back right now.

Right he's saying it's a suspected heart attack: a 69 year old male.

There's a medical emergency, a passenger is critically ill on board.

There is a pressing situation on board with a potential heart attack.

Cabin crew is dealing with the passenger, applying CPR as per their training.

Unfortunately they made a PA for a doctor on board, which was not positive.

Georg needs to act quickly to get medical attention for the sick man.

He wants to divert the plane to the nearest airport.

What is the shortest distance?

The shortest is Delhi.

This is our EK303, coming from Shanghai, it's close to Delhi,

30 minutes and it will be there.

So therefore Delhi's the one.

Yes that's understood.

Obviously it's time critical, so Delhi is the better option there.

With every second that goes by potentially meaning the difference between

life and death.

Georg needs the plane on the ground as soon as possible.

Support is already called out.

Ambulances are already called out, so we just have to get the airplane on the ground.

Yes, 303, go ahead please.

But Peter receives an urgent call from the pilot.

Yeah, that's understood.

We're just watching the RVRs drop down to 50 meters on runway 29.

The RVR or runway visual range is critically low because of the foggy weather

conditions in Delhi.

Currently the weather in Delhi is not ideal, it's below landing minimum;

it's less than 50 meters.

There is no way we'll land an A380 in Delhi.

Obviously the captain's priority is rescuing life.

It's challenging.

Georg now has a plane in the air, with a critically ill passenger aboard,

and nowhere close to land.

And Dubai also has its share of bad weather.

It's one of only 7 days a year of rain for Dubai and the new construction of

concourse D is just 3 months from completion.

The billion dollar project will take the airport's capacity from 75 to 90 million

passengers every year.

Myles Jones from engineering projects is responsible for delivering

the concourse on time.

Yeah look you need to get a clean up crew in here quick.

And B, get some people on board to be available straight away.

Early morning and this is our first leak, hopefully the last.

This is the first time it's rained here now since last winter.

This is not what we want.

The rain is threatening to cause serious damage to the concourse.

We've got carpets, we've got beam seating.

We've got floor boxes they've got rubber gaskets but they've got power and data.

We don't want water getting in any of these, and also the water has the potential to

drip down through the vents which goes through to the floor below.

We don't want any damage below us either.

Brice, we need a clean-up crew in here quick, as quick as possible.

We need to do a survey, we need to walk the whole perimeter of the building,

make sure there's nothing like this.

This is the first leak Myles has spotted and he's worried

there could be more.

It's a 1 mile circuit around the perimeter of the concourse and Myles has to

check every inch of it.

He starts calling contractors.

I'm expecting it to get a little bit worse because it's only the start of the day

right, and it has only just started raining.

And, it's not even raining that much.

I'm more worried about what is downstairs.

We have got the working offices downstairs and if any water drips down

into those offices and damages ceilings.

When it rains in Dubai, it rains heavy.

With the current weather conditions causing havoc to Myles's operation,

he's worried that if it gets any worse the damage will become costly.

Currently at 12:00 there's going to be a shower and they expect around

6 millimeters of rain.

Currently it's only about 2 millimeters, it says here on the weather app,

which is not a good situation because if it's going to rain triple that in about 3 hours

then we need to clean up these and stop water coming out of these ceilings.

There's now real urgency to stop the leak as soon as possible.

But when he returns to the initial leak, the drip has turned into a deluge.

I don't know why there's no one here cleaning this up.

It's been now 20 minutes, it's not raining much outside and we need to get

this fixed up quickly.

See now it's starting to drip here.

Oh Jeez, that is bad.

The leak is spreading uncontrolled,

and now it's threatening to damage the electrical circuits.

To get urgent medical help to the seriously ill passenger on board a flight from

Shanghai to Dubai.

Network control boss Georg wants the pilot to divert to the nearest airport, Delhi.

The captain just called and realizes that runway 29 is only having 50 meters

visibility and unfortunately we need 75 for landing.

So we are not coming to Delhi.

Yeah, there is still concern for the passenger's welfare.

With Delhi not an option, Georg needs an alternative.

Fast.

What's the weather like in Hyderabad?

Er, Hyderabad, the weather is fine.

Hyderabad in south India is 800 miles south of their current location,

and two hours away.

It's one of the few in the region with a runway wide enough for the A380,

the biggest passenger jet in the world.

But diverting to Hyderabad comes with its own risks.

The problem is we don't have an engineering support at all,

because we do not regularly fly to Hyderabad, so there is no A380 engineer down there.

So we don't want to envisage any technical issue there.

With no engineer on the ground the enormous A380 along with its 467 passengers

could be stranded if there is a mechanical failure after landing.

But with a man's life in the balance Georg decides it's an operational

risk he's got to take.

We are diverting to Hyderabad.

Understood, Hyderabad eta 2252.

Peter relays Georg's decision straight to the pilot.

That's all copied, we'll leave you to it for now and we'll talk to you again

once you're on the ground.

As a diversion, it took almost two hours to get to Hyderabad.

But hopefully, with enough time to have the passenger survive.

Flight tracking radar allows Georg and Peter to watch the plane landing

live in Hyderabad.

It's touching down.

Georg and Peter have done all they can to get the sick passenger to medical help

as fast as possible.

The doctor's on board.

His fate is now out of their hands.

Do you have any update with regards to the passenger's condition?

MAN (over radio): At this stage he's still unconscious, you know, not looking too good.

Haven't got him off the aeroplane as yet.

The doctor is still on board so the situation is not necessarily looking too good.

Finally, the captain of the A380 has news.

The sick passenger plus two others coming off?

OK so one other passenger which is his partner.

The passenger is conscious, he is breathing.

The passenger is alive, that's the most important thing.

Which is good news.

Thanks to Georg's decisive action the sick man is now receiving

life-saving medical attention.

But the diversion will cost Emirates extra fuel and landing fees,

and now they may be stuck with an even bigger bill.

We're running against the clock down there in Hyderabad.

Back at concourse D, rare desert rain has caused a major leak and water is

streaming into the building, threatening to damage electrical circuits.

You can see that it's starting to drip out of the plasterboard,

so that means there's water in the plasterboard and it's only a matter of time before it

starts spreading in the ceiling.

Someone needs to go upstairs and put plastic up.

No, no but put plastic and direct the water onto the glass,

it doesn't matter at least.

It's going to start damaging the ceiling.

At 12:00 we're going to expect a heavy shower.

Thirty minutes after Myles first discovered the leak contractors finally

arrive to fix it and prevent further damage.

Someone needs to build a scaffold or something because that pipe,

you can't see that pipe, it's behind the steel beam.

We'll build scaffold, we will take the cladding off.

Is that cladding? Is that...

Like a little cladding panel, that top.

Aluminum cladding? Yeah.

The leak appears to be coming from behind a finished piece of the ceiling,

twenty feet above their heads, but to find the exact source of the problem,

Myles needs to undo days of costly work.

Unfortunately this aluminum cladding which has just been put up,

siliconed in and finished off, we have to pull it apart.

There's still no sign of the rain letting up outside and in two hours time,

even more rain is due to hit.

With water still streaming inside the concourse, Myles knows the damage

will only get worse.

When I saw that water coming it was coming from behind that steel beam,

you know, you've got the cladding on the front side.

We'll get the insulation out and have a look and see.

Just keep the scaffold here until it rains again.