Airlines Uncovered: Backstage at Qatar Airways Operations

Airlines Uncovered: Backstage at Qatar Airways Operations

so this is all new for me I’ve been a passenger for almost 40 years haven’t done this and today we’re going to go with a crew good morning we’re going behind the scenes today at Qatar Airways Operation [Music] Center hi good morning and Welcome to our cat Airways Operation Center um we’ve got over 1,000 crew reporting this morning for over 91 flights that are going within our first wave um as you can see the crew are arriving here at cata’s operations center where the cabin crew and flight deck will drop their luggage for their respective flight and then proceed to their respective dispatch or briefing room where are you flying today Atlanta Atlanta where are you flying today Amsterdam Amsterdam morning how are you doing I’m flying to London G today where are you flying to New York New York morning la la so once the crew as I alluded to before have dropped their bag or check their bag in they’ll then come here the cabin crew and report for duty this will then tell our operations team whether the crew member’s here or not whether we need to find another crew member for whatever the reason may be in order to operate the flight the flight debt will proceed through to flight dispatch which is just to the right of me here and we’ll take you there [Music] shortly so after the flight deck have dropped their baggage for their respective flight the gentlemen or ladies will proceed here the captain first officer or a fourman crew depending on the length of flight and conduct their operational briefing here where they print off the operational flight plan check the weather and the dispatch of the flight they’ll then proceed to the aircraft so I’m at the table QR 826 today operating Bangkok with first opposite pal here yeah give us a rundown what’s it like here okay when I come here I need to check in first and check the document after that I will check the fry pan and clean the fry pan and B it to here and waiting for the captain ah you’re waiting for the captain and then to discuss the flight plan yeah disc the flight plan waiter and no and along the loot have theet or not and everything about the field yeah and What airplane you flying 787 787 that’s it so any cabin crew that have reported and may require any additional grooming checks or any grooming additional help should we say can come to our grooming and standards room here within cat’s Operation Center so would you look at this we have last minute we ironing yeah you have a lots of stuff here yeah we have a changing room we have actually some uniforms oh that we actually borrow to the crew members right right in case somebody lose a button if there is a button damage the uniform accidentally got damaged and we have changing room that they can actually look for changing that’s the area we have L I found some uniforms are left on board we have Quick Fix items if they want a quick touchup nail polish makeup wow it’s been lots of standard here yes maintaining the level so I came down to this hallway all the crew has checked in and reported now I’m coming to one of the briefing rooms here they’re inside talk about their flights before going out to the plane and let’s join them together hello good morning good morning where are we flying to today Atlanta Atlanta that’s exciting trip 7 trip 7 okay so I’ll be your guest here I’ll be listening to a little bit of your breathing if my May good morning once again guys all of you how are you fit to fly okay all your passport legal documents with you right service items everything is with you okay we’ll start our briefing first with the introduction my name is khad from Lebanon hi my name is j you can call me y for short from Malaysia 10 years thank you thank you yes please I come from Malawi hi good morning I come from from Tunisia uh I’m from Philippines from Philippines too hi Swaziland I’m from India good morning I’m Cindy from Philippines good morning I’m from India hi s from India good morning from China from South Korea I’m from India good morning from Turkey I going to Atlanta QR 755 Bravo Alpha golf this is the registration of the aircraft as you can see the flight is full 41291 this is the load for this flight and then after this you will have one infant you will have around uh 15 wheelchair 26 children in economy and three children at the back uh in business class and one infant in economy two platinum in economy and of course you’ll have all the other Gold Member silver and burgundy will be all of them there as you can see we have a lot of wheelchair Also let’s assist the wheelchair infant we don’t have a lot of infant it’s good for us at least but please be ready with the infant SB infant life jacket and after this we’ll start boarding let’s assist and sped the boarding at least we can close the door and and start push back and we can do whatever we can do on ground for the boarding please be present in the cabin as see with the special handling with the baggage please close the overhead bin when it’s full so that they won’t be struggling to look for the space in the overhead bin yeah and this Tri 7 the overhead bin is quite heavy if you need help please call one of your colleague or ask the customer to assist you and make sure the overhead bin is fully closed because we don’t want anything to open during take off and Landing okay so this is all new for me I’ve been a passenger for almost 40 years haven’t done this and today we’re going to go with a crew they’re coming out of the exit to join the crew on the crew bus to see how they go on the airplane hello hello Fly Atlanta hi everyone wow say hi to the camera r2a am R1 Mia l2a no Carmen right L2 and Shanice R2 just heard you assigning door positions right how did you assign that is it a computer assignment or you manually assign to each cre it’s manually assignment that you can see we have the crew list here I R the position first I would check the crew what her previous position was there and then after this I would be where the jump seat that’s where they sit at each door to each door because everybody is responsible for different uh position and I’m with one of the crew apparently you were on standby last night yeah you got pulled out yeah so what time did you get a call to come out to do with this so actually my standby started from 4:00 a.m. until 12: during the day and then I I turn on my alarm at 350 and then I got the message at 3:59 that you are operating Atlanta yeah I was like wow okay cool yeah you going stand by you never know where you flying you never know here we just arrived at our aircraft with all the crew [Music] together and here all the crew went upstairs boarding the flight to Atlanta but however we’re going to stay a little bit longer at the Operation Center to [Music] explore so the crew all boarded inside of Triple 7 and I’m here on the Run almost about half an hour all the planes are still here yep nothing’s been happening it’s quiet okay so we have the 91 departures in the morning of which 50 are between 8:00 and 9:00 because as you can see now it’s now 20 to8 so still 20 minutes to go we do have conflicting schedules where we have a lot of airplanes that need to push back at the same time whereby we use airport collaborative decision making in order to sequence the traffic depending at the time they need to depart well that’s my first time I heard about something called airport coll of decision making what exactly is that CDM it’s just about building the picture in order to sequence the traffic so behind me here you can see there’s nine or eight airplanes ready to push that will be sequenced in order to release them one by [Music] one give [Music] [Music] [Music] where the airport SCS changed very fast here for the whole hour we were crazy busy plane spotting catching all the airplane departing out of here and look the whole airport now is empty we’re going to H back to the Operation Center for more [Music] now this is our cater integrated Operation Center as you can see from the video wall behind me I think we got 572 flights today we’ve departed 157 of which 98 have departed from Doha in this room they’re making key decisions for both our commercial operation and the cargo operation to ensure our customers and crew safety at all [Music] times pretty serious stuff going on I hear phone call left and right it’s like the nerve sent enter the operation right and see this is like a flight tracker map here so all the airplanes katar fly is on the map that’s all 159 aircraft in the air as currently Airborne at the minute yeah one has just landed cuz it was [Music] 160 so out of all the deaths there’s a guy sitting in the middle he must be a very important guy making decision in the middle right yep so this is umit today so he’s our senior manager ioc so he’s the most central figure within ioc in the most responsible on duty youit do you want to tell us about what’s been happening today uh today actually we are facing a couple of uh weather issues in Northern Pakistan which uh caused by fog and uh it was below our uh Landing limits uh especially Pasa for example was below the limits uh for the entire night and we do have a window which we can land now in the noon time we have already uh made our B plan in case we diverge to Islamabad in this case we have are consing Islam right now everybody is aware including the captain so we’re over here now at ioc flight watch this is part of the dispatch function these guys are looking predominantly at supporting the crew when they’re on Route with weather um any Air route closures anything that’s imp impacting the flight from a dispatch point of view there is one flight Milan Chicago and we got the information from the captain there that there is some end rout changes in the routing so we Pro provided the new flight plan to the aircraft also we are monitoring all these flights in terms of weather issue ahead so there is a turbulence area ahead of these all these flights so we’ll provide the information regarding this turbulance area to the aircraft also we are monitoring all these flight in terms of lateral deviation vertical deviation and if there is a deviation the time so we will ask the captain if there is any assistance required and in case if there is any assistance required we run the flight plan and do do whatever we need and we will provide the information to the group so I’m with supri here the network manager he’s monitoring many flights he’s watching so the one we are interested is qr755 which saw it took off to Atlanta so where is QR 755 right now well qr755 is in the turkey f as of now and it’s cruising at uh 30,000 ft uhhuh it has actually taken a fuel of 101 tons 101 tons of fuel yes wow no issue so far all smooth sing no issues so far there’s no messages from the crew so everything is no Medicals nothing looks like it’s going to be it’s going to be a smooth flight and we have more 11 hours to go okay fine yeah uh this one just came in Sam we have a flight in Riyad QR 1171 apparently the left hand main landing gear actu has been broken so we have approximately 350 passenger it’s a full flight uh they don’t have Spar available in real so now the next available option is we need some to send The Spar from Doha on the next flight to Riad so that would be around 1120 UTC so maintenance are now preparing to uh Source the spares in Doha they going to do the packing send it on a rush tag on the next flight to Riad and they’re going to fix it so they’re going to take around 3 to 4 hours once they get the spares in hand and once it’s fixed we can get the passengers back to go [Music] so now I came to flight dispatch because I have a flight to catch tonight it’s going to be behind the scenes going on the A380 see how the crew operate but first let’s look at this match from Doha to Bangkok so what’s the weather looks like what’s how’s our Roots looks like yeah we have run multiple routes today and the most optimum route is the one that we have selected today uh going uh towards UAE and then towards north of India and then south of Bay of Bengal direct to Bangkok and we plan you alternate as a Colour which our aircraft can handle and uh return back as soon as possible so you don’t have any uh much of severe turbulence EX for the initial part of it and then you’ll have a little bit of a bumpy right over here and then after that it’s clear weather and if you go and check the weather actually if you see in the Bangkok weather it’s uh wind is norly 360 m and uh there’s no uh rain or good it’s the dry season it’s clear days good nice one to fly to I want to document how the crew are preparing for the flight we’re doing a flight to Bangkok how many crew tonight oper we have 25 ready to depart to bang thailand4 alha take off rotate today we had a little minor defects before [Music] departure so next we’re going to beare for the breakfast hi welcome to the secret place I’m going to tell you about how many Kwang we have on airb a38 50 40 together on YouTube soon there Channel thank you so much have a good day Welcome to My Country

A rare behind-the-scenes airline operation at Qatar Airways Operation Center (QROC) to see how the crew reports and prepares for their flight. A team of professionals performs flight watch and makes critical decisions to ensure smooth operation of the airline.

At 6am in the early morning, it is full of action at Qatar Airways Operation Center (QROC). Thousands of Qatar Airways pilots and cabin crew depart from here for their flights. All Qatar Airways crew checked in here at the building before their flight. I went behind the scenes to see how the crew got briefed before operating their flight. The pilot will meet their flying partner at the pilot briefing area. The cabin crew will meet their team member at the designated briefing room and go through the flight details. A grooming check is also conducted during the briefing. Then, I joined the crew on the crew bus out to the aircraft on the ramp.

There were about 100 departures in the busy morning hours at Hamad International Airport. I filmed many of the departures before going back to the Qatar Airways Operation Center. I visited the Integrated Operation Control Center (IOCC) where a team of professionals performed flight watch and made critical decisions to ensure the smooth operation of the airline. The supervisor on duty shared about the weather issue and possible flight disruptions. The commercial team looked after re-booking and re-accommodating affected passengers. The maintenance team deals with “Aircraft On Ground” (AOG) issues. I was given a rare behind-the-scenes on airline operations.