4 Airport

Big, Bigger, Biggest... Airport reveals how seven ingenious technological breakthroughs have enabled engineers to build the world’s busiest International Airport - Heathrow Airport.

Heathrow Airport in London is the busiest international airport in the world processing over 80 million passengers a year.

On March 27th, 2008, a brand new Terminal – T5 – opened at Heathrow Airport in London – the busiest international airport in the world. T5 will increase Heathrow’s operation capacity to over 100 million passengers a year.

Building T5 was in immense challenge. With unique, behind the scenes filming access to the architects and construction team involved in this undertaking, this film reveals the technological breakthroughs that enabled Terminal 5 to be built.

We show how seven ingenious technological breakthroughs enabled engineers to build this brand new terminal super-structure. With its enormous free span roof and fully automated baggage system to the robotic vehicles speeding passengers to its doors, T5 is designed to feed 30 million extra passengers a year through Heathrow.

We reveal how architects had to build – and move - a brand new Air Traffic Control Tower into place at the airport to safely control all the additional aircraft at T5. The 87 metre tall Tower had to be positioned right in the middle of the airport. But constructing it in situ would have caused chaos. So T5 engineers had to build the 1,000 ton glass and steel superstructure outside the airfield perimeter, lift it up onto huge multi-wheeled transporters, and move the tower 2 kilometres into position. In a tense overnight operation, it took five hours to haul the tower across one of Heathrow’s main runways to reach its new foundations. "It was a great challenge, because we had to do it without stopping airline operations, not a single flight could be re-scheduled", says T5 architect, Mike Davies.

Davies also reveals the logistical challenges he faced constructing the ten-storey T5 Terminal building. The 40m tall ‘skyscraper terminal’ is topped with a single span roof the size of five football fields. Raising it into position was one of the biggest challenges facing the construction team – a single piece of the roof weighs more than six jumbo jets!

Lifting the roof into position using huge tower cranes was impossible – they would be so tall they would disturb Heathrow’s radar system which operates just three metres above the ceiling of T5. "You can’t poke cranes up into that area, otherwise you start collecting undercarriages, so we had to conceive a design built from below", says Mike.

We show how Mike’s team developed a revolutionary system to jack the completed roof panels into place up off the ground. It took almost a year to raise up all the roof sections – over 18,000 tonnes of steel in total – into place.

But Heathrow Airport wasn’t built in a day.

It stands on the shoulders of a series of historic engineering achievements that have allowed it to get so big. We chart the stories of seven historic inventions, embodied by seven landmark airports, that enabled Heathrow to grow so large.

We show how Air Traffic Control technology developed at Croyden Airport in the UK to safely manage the passage of aircraft in the skies. We show how the Terminal Building evolved at Gatwick Airport in London and how runway design progressed at Chicago O’Hare. We reveal the secret history of moving walkways developed at Dallas Love Field airport, chart the development of airport security systems at Atlanta International and show how automated baggage systems evolved at LAX.

One by one - travelling up the scale - we’ll reveal the incredible stories behind these iconic airports and the inventions that enabled them to handle ever greater numbers of passengers. Seven ingenious leaps forward that enabled Airports to evolve …from BIG to BIGGER into the World’s BIGGEST.

The film also reveals how revolutionary transporter pods – PRT’s – are being installed into Heathrow T5. "They are like little robots. They’re intelligent, they have on-board computers and can sense their surroundings", remarks Richard Teychenne who worked on their development. The battery powered pods can shuttle four passengers to T5 every three seconds – without a driver.

The film also goes behind the scenes to show how a brand new fully automated baggage system was tested and installed below T5 to store and sort 100,000 bags a day at the Terminal.

Over 50% of the film is set in a stunning and stylish CGI world, where our seven inventions and landmark airports come to life. Combined with live action visual effects and practical demonstrations this film provides the ultimate explanation of how ingenious technology enabled Airports to evolve into the busiest international airport in the world – Heathrow, London.