Found Abandoned British Airways Plane Simulators at Training Centre (Part 2)
Вставка
- Опубліковано 23 вер 2021
- Check Out Blinkist:
www.blinkist.com/en/nc/partne...
In this video, we continue our exploration at the massive abandoned British Airways Flight Training Centre. We discover some beautiful naturally decaying classrooms, more motion simulators and real converted planes used for practical training!
SUBTITLES AVAILABLE SOON
Help support the channel -
/ urbandoned
www.urbandonedteam.com/store
paypal.me/urbandoneddonate
Other links -
www.urbandonedteam.com/
/ urbandoned_
urbandoned_?lang=...
/ discord
/ urbandoned
/ @urbandoned
Our urbex library -
• Exploring an Abandoned...
abandoned urbandoned derelict urbex explore exploring uk british airways flight training centre college campus airport heathrow plane aircraft motion simulator decay nature natural london england britain documentary walkthrough video - Розваги
Check Out Blinkist:
www.blinkist.com/en/nc/partners/urbandoned
I was BA cabin crew in the 90s and spent 6 weeks training here at Cranebank followed by every year after on our annual safety and emergency checks. It is so eerie now to see this place abandoned and decaying. Very interesting and sad to see the place like that.
It's so weird, I did my training there about 12 years ago, really strange to see it abandoned.
Most commercial buildings have a design life of 25 years. Pretty shocking when I learnt that during construction courses. They're basically throwaway buildings. It's cheaper to build new than refurbish.
Get us a G&T and a bag of peanuts love..
I was a project production manager at the north Sussex company who built many of the Full Flight Simulators at Cranebank. So Strange to see them in this state of decrepitude after 30+ years. We built them with such care, enthusiasm and pride, but all aircraft have a lifespan before being sold on to smaller airlines and the simulators superseded.
the cabin at around 16:50 is for the instructor. Those simulators were used to train flight attendants and in that cabin, the instructor could chose different scenarios (like turn on some smoke, simulate water landing,..). They also train CRM (crew resource management) there as it seems and you sometimes need a "fake" cockpit crew for that. Or they could also use it to train how to remove an unconscious pilot from his seat.
The high-viz jackets at 23:08 were used by the "active" crew. Usually a course has up to 20 or more people. Only a few of them are selected as active crew and the rest simulates passengers. After a round is over, the active crew switches and other people take over.
This makes me so sad….seeing corridors I used to walk down, classrooms I used to sit in, tables I used to write on and mock up aircraft I used to be tested in, every year….what a shameful waste. Surely even the tables and chairs would have been useful, even if they had just been given away….I am sure that old aircraft seats would be snapped up by enthusiast and retired crew like myself. It’s just a typical example of our throwaway culture and of how wasteful we have become….I have many great memories from both my initial training and many nervous annual recurrents at ‘braincrank’. So a sad to see how’s it’s been left to decay.
All big businesses do this. Interestingly I watched a video yesterday which said Elon Musk with his mission to inhabit Mars, personally signs off any order over $10k. At big companies I've worked at I've had approval levels 10 times that in pretty low level jobs. It's all part of the system. I'm sure you're not complaining too much about your totally unstainable BA pension which is an equally wasteful system.
What’s my pension got to do with highlighting the waste of the tables, chairs etc?
A reason a lot of the stuff was abandoned as you saw was multifold. One of the major things fellow aviation geeks may notice is the simulators and mock aircraft all represented aircraft types that were either retired already or were going to be retired in the near future. It was likely more cost effective to leave the simulators and items that were outdated than move them and have to throw them away or put them in storage anyways
You have to wonder? I mean that’s a 737-400 simulator. That would have resale value to this day. And whoever buys it would pay to dismantle and haul it out. Why just abandon something like that?
@@andrewtaylor940 The number of 737-400s still in service isn't great. And everybody who still flies them already has enough simulators for their needs. The 400 is heading into retirement in favor of much more efficient replacements.
@@Turboy65 True, but there is almost always a market for simulators for still flying planes, if just for the parts. It just seems strange to completely abandon them to the elements. I did see it right that those were link simulators, correct? A number of theme parks would buy them for the specialized parks. Disney and Universal both have high volume rides that use those sims as the basis. Such as Star Tours. The much larger cabin simulators I can understand not being able to sell or move. But those still break my heart to see rotting. I know of a few Emergency Services Training facilities that would kill to have those. And they don’t need latest model specific sims. Just basic aircraft layouts to practice entry and egress, search and rescue and patient handling.
@@andrewtaylor940 In fairness, the number of operators still flying the B737-400 are typically smaller, discount passenger or freighter airlines that have "newly" acquired that type. The cost to purchase/maintain a $10MM level-D simulator is out of reach for the majority of those operators that only have a few -400 models in their fleet. It's therefore, more cost effective to send their limited number of -400 pilots to facilities that already have these certified simulators already in place.
@@andrewtaylor940 That's not even a 400, it's an old 200. You don't see them in Europe anymore and they start to become rare in developing countries as well.
I had a look round here on my own recently. It's still a good location. There's a three part television documentary on UA-cam about BA from about 2010 and you can see Cranebank in it several times.
Love the aircraft noise from Heathrow in the background makes it more surreal somehow
As a sim pilot enthusiast this place is loaded with stuff I’d love to have in my collection
Yeah, the documentation folders of the aircraft would be like pure gold :D
Maby you can go and buy it , bung security a few quid
@@mehere3013 shady bastards would take it I guarantee. However I live in the States not London anymore so it’s quite the swim to get some books. Lol
@@MaxRank yeah some genuine panels too lol
B757-1…. There’s a blast from the past. That sim was exactly my age. Black and white / night visuals only. Many many an hour spent in there, sometimes weeks on end. Braincrank has become an artefact. Strange to think of life there some 20 years ago.
This makes me very sad and a tad angry. What a shameful waste to let it all decay to rubbish.
They found a ton of asbestos and the cost of renovation was too high to make it worthy on this older building.
This is what is the problem with decon its expensive, even if you let public in to take stuff it would be a public safety issue !
Thank you very much for your videos. I have been in these buildings so many times as a former British Airways cabin crew, it brought back a lot of memories. However, it is extremely sad to see the buildings abandoned and decaying like that…
how is it being a cabin crew member on a flight? Is the pay good aswell? I’ve been thinking becoming one because I’m interested in aviation but not sure
The patterns in the simulator room look a lot like the old “Ethnic” liveries from the 1990s.
I can definitely recognise "Colour Down the Side", "Bauhaus" and " Colum". Haven't seen them for years.
BA engineer said those patterns a nightmare, as you couldn't swap around rudders, the patterns wouldn't match.
@@flybobbie1449 I never even though about that, that would suck
Project Utopia lost BA millions
God those liveries were loathsome
That "weird decor" is actually depictions of the designs that BA had on the tails of their aircraft in the 90s to early 00s. The so called British Airways "World Tails" program. Those mock ups in the hangar were not real planes. They were purpose built mock ups.
Oh f*cking right !!!!
I can't speak for the 737 shell as it was completely intact. However that 747 was definitely a repurposed fuselage, look at the metalwork and ribbing+telltale green paint where the panelling was removed here: ua-cam.com/video/_pcozSmAcZE/v-deo.html There is no way that they would go through the trouble of recreating that just for a mockup when the trainees were never supposed to see underneath the panels.
@@harrier331 These mockups are made at the Boeing factory, and for reasons of cost efficiency, are made to the same design specifications of actual aircraft, using the same parts and assembly processes. much of the training requires the relevant structures to be EXACTLY the same as operationalaircraft (eg:opening, closing and arming doors and emergency features) It would be FAR MORE expensive to "carve up" an actual aircraft. Where precision instruments (fittings) were irrelevant for the purpose of the simulator, such parts were not fitted (reason why the cockpit is garnished with stickers).
But this was never a functional aircraft.
@@brunosmith6925 I still don't believe it... The fuselage of aircraft is practically worthless when it comes the the actual scrapping of said aircraft it is almost always worth more to the scrapper in literal metal weight than it is to keep the structure, I have personal experience dealing with Air Salvage International as part of my work to attest to that fact.
I also know about air crew training... None of it requires the simulated environments to be manufactured in the same manner as a real aircraft, only that the interior/exterior are the same and that the functions are the same. The simulated cockpit instrument panels in the 747 also point to that fact... a scrapped and repurposed fuselage where all valuable components were removed.
It's a simple numbers game, the cost to manufacture this large of a section of fuselage using the same assembly as a real aircraft (especially when the manufacturing techniques are irrelevant) would be exorbitantly expensive whereas using a real scrapped and repurposed fuselage would be very inexpensive, It's that simple.
You lose all credibility when you claim that Boeing uses the same parts and production specifications.
Even if I did accept that Boeing made these specifically as training aids (I don't) the notion that they would use the same parts and materials etc is farcical. I have worked within a specific feild of aircraft interior design for many years, the cost of certification, flamability testing and record keeping etc that is required for aircraft components and materials is extremely high, the claim that they would literally throw money down the drain and use certified components and materials when there would be no requirement to is laughable. Boeing is not a monitarily stupid company, they know what they are doing.
Having said all of that, if you have some real proof of what you claim then please provide it...
@@harrier331 mock ups can be made by anyone, but aircraft manufacturers sometimes have an involvement as they can incorporate it as part of the contract to buy the airframe type.
But there is nil reason other than convenience for them to make the mock up.
Somewhere like BA has the purchasing power to get mock ups included with a sale agreement, smaller airlines buying second hand airframes certainly won't get it from the likes of Boeing.
Even you average college in the UK that does courses for prospective aircraft stewards will have a fuselage mock up.
Even some travel agents used to have mock ups so people could choose their seat or class.
The mock aircraft in the large building at 15:06 are just that mock aircraft not converted aircraft
the mock planes were not ever real planes, they were mock ups made for training. they were used to demonstrate evacuations and they were floating because they were usually surrounded by a pool of water to demonstrate water landings.
Wow some enlightening stuff there. So you're saying that the mock planes weren't real planes. And that they floated coz they were surrounded by water. WOW, this is real 'insider stuff'.
Just out of interest when it wasn't water they were surrounded by then what did they float on instead?
The sheer size of this place is just incredible! You guys are very fortunate to of explored this. Amazing video!
I'm glad to have stumbled across your two videos showing Cranebank - often affectionately known as "braincrank" by many of us. As others have already commented, it is sad to see the state of the place. The scale and complexity of the site reveals the scale of the operation. Imagine the thousands of BA crew and pilots passing through their intial training of weeks at a time plus the annual SEP and AVMED courses for each of us - 2 days at a time. Cranebank was running 7 days a week with hundreds passing through every day. The main SEP Hall with all of the mock-ups could be very busy. The photo you showed of the place before closing, gave a hint of what else was in there. There was hardly a corner of that hall that did not have a mock-up of some sort. There were doors for every aircraft type, slides, rafts every piece of SEP equipment and it was a conveyer belt of activities. The 747 did used to move and there were sound effects and "flames" at the windows! Over time and with age, they became static simulators. The vast canteen that you showed in part 1 used to serve fantastic full cooked breakfasts and the best curries! Thanks for your covert recording guys. This has brought back many fond memories of the people and times I had the pleasure to work with at BA. Nice job!
Really loved these two videos on the BA training centre. Very informative, love looking at the simulators. Such a shame its all left to rot!
I was very lucky many years ago, to fly on BA Concorde where we were allowed to visit the flight deck, mid flight. It was a surreal experience i shall never forget.
Thanks again guys for sharing..
Amazing to see. I was at Cranebank in 1994 on the mock-up aircraft. I was cabin crew but not with BA. I worked for a smaller airline (Air UK Leisure) which had to outsource certain elements of crew training as they simply didn’t have the facilities like BA had.
Ditto! I worked for Air UK leisure.We did are recurrent training here every year.
@@pennymcgarry8329 haha small world! What a great friendly company it was. Ended up with Britannia, ok but nowhere near as friendly.
A fantastic tour of such an amazing and unique facility. I'm always torn when I see such places - glad that not too much has been taken, but sad that such things go to waste.
I new a gut that bought the Trident 300 B jet from BA and had it in his barn in Biggin Hill, I loved going over to his place and use it. I really loved going there and learning to fly it. I then had a chance to have 2 hrs in a 747 sim once I started flying privately, BA let you go and fly their simon a Saturday morning, Mr Mannion was my instructor, I loved it!!!!
A lot of the art on the wall is inspired by the BA tail designs from 1997. Fifteen different designs to represent art and culture from around the world. A nice idea, but didn’t really “fly” (see what I did there!)
By 2001 the decision was made to revert to the more traditional Union Jack, speedmarque logo and by 2006 all the fleet had been repainted red, white and blue.
aka the ‘Chatham Dockyard’ livery
Brought here by the mention in your 100000 Q&A and boy am I pleased I was.
This has to be the most extra special explore I've seen you do.
The moss! The beautiful way you fiilmed it! The scale of the place!
It's the first time in my life that I've realised just how big our international companies are. I'd probably imagined that there might be a dozen simulators perhaps. Not dozens and dozens of them!
It's massive, big enough for an whole army of staff.
The fact that it's all rotting shows how gigantic the company is and makes me even happier to fly BA if this is what they can leave behind. Begs the question, what's the current facility like?
Thank you, thank you.
I found the mock aircraft’s fascinating! Great job not getting caught. 👍😊
Loved part 2 as much as part 1. Thanks for sharing and good one for not getting caught 😀
just watched part 2 was amazing such great inside of the British Airways building very good quality video
Such a unique explore, great work lasting 10hrs!
The Art Deco staircase looked amazing.
Surely in London that land must be worth a fortune!
It was sold to a developer for 10s of £ms about 3 years ago.
Yea but price of removal and remediation of asbestos in the buildings would be up there too. Then add demolision on-top of that. Would it really be worth it?
@@toddross7507 well if that were true the country would just be full of abandoned building that never get redeveloped. Especially as just about everywhere in the world is less valuable than space and land in London.
@@david1731048 don't disagree with what you said, for some instances it would be. I'd say most likely they'd sit on the land and watch the value go up further before developing.
@@mikemorris3421 was it sold?,I understood that BA own the land , and when the 3rd runway is built which would include Waterside being demolished, the plan was to redevelop Cranebank as the head office ?
I hope a museum grabs some of this stuff before the wrecking ball turns it into dust.
Amazing video, thanks for all your effort!
So far this is my #1 video. Don't know if its cause I love aviation, or just a cool building. Such an amazing walk through. Love the building, ruined or not..
You guys are wonderful at this I find other people who post these type of clips so disrespectful you guys are so good at what you do xx
hahaha you made me giggle at 23:28, no gearsticks, control columns my love hehehe
but i love your caring attitude throughout, you boys are very mindful of your surroundings
All the flight simulators shown in the videos are for aircraft that BA no longer operates. These aircraft such as the B737-400 haven’t been made in decades. The same applies to the training mock-ups. With the exception of the B747-400 mock-up. Much of what they left behind is very outdated and obsolete.
Great video guys. The indoor gardens are crazy!
The circular window shown around 28.07 is supposedly the exact diameter of a Boeing 777 engine.
You should go and check out the old abandoned Arriva Bus Garage in Garston before it gets knocked down and turned into homes.
Fantastic video guys te sound of the air craft went through me really enjoying your channel
Well done great find & explore
This channel is underrated
Simply amazing
Brilliant that guys!
could not wait until this one was loaded part 1 was amazing
Great video and exploration
So happy I found part 2 👍 subscribed
I have many memories of training there. Not as cabin crew but for a mixture of roles over my time and BA. Fascinating to see, but also sad to see the state of the place. Surprised it's not flattened and sold off by now.
Great video👍 I love the moss garden
great vid thanks
That was awesome
This is so weird to see, I have photographs of me training here in 2002 and had no idea this is how it looked today! this is so weird & sad.
Aircraft mock-ups are still used for emergency procedures training as a more life-like method is yet to be developed. The large swimming pools were used to train water ditching procedures. Shameful to see waste on such a vast, irresponsible scale. Wonder why all the cars were abandoned at 1:03 … a superb old ceiling at 1:06 … Thank you 🙏🏼
You do realize that was their title intro and not all those shots are from this site, the pools and cars are from a different video.
@@jordanbrown1170 I didn’t realize that, so thank you 🙏🏼
I have been in the simulator that was in B757-1 a few times, both at BA and the company who purchased it who are still using it.
Amazing explore guys!! What a massive complex to explore!
So one thing I’m dying to ask…..Was there anything in all those buildings that had to do with Concorde training? Would have been a treat to stumble upon a mock-up cabin or better yet, the flight deck/simulator! Maybe there was another location for Concorde that BA and AF trained their senior crew members at??
Thanks again for the explore!!
So much BA stuff that people into planes / BA would love
I trained in here in mid 90' 2000's s as cabin crew.
Amazing to see this again and the decay.
great work
It was a wonderful video with so many things to see!
The only thing that stuck to my mind that was the mentioning of those mockup planes, especially the 747 being "real, formerly used planes". Are you sure about that? Even though it seems to be very well made, the exterior clearly has the looks of a fake mockup (too smooth and clean to be a cut model from a real plane).
That last bit of the video was actually the recruitment centre and the airport rooms were where interviews took place. (I actually had my interview there). Great videos guys brought back many memories.
I did my 747 engineering course there!
To answer one of your questions, the simulators that were left behind appear to all be of types that are older and so there is little demand for the simulators. Such as the 737-400. Not many are still flying, and those operators that still fly them have all the 737-400 simulators they need...if not more. Why spend hundreds of thousands to move simulators that are surplus to anybody's needs?
An amusement park could have wanted those outdated sims, or are the operating and maintenance costs prohibitively high?
nice video
Why was so much furniture and equipment just abandoned? Surely they could have sold them off?
Great work.
It could be those offices in the Pay and People Centre were interview rooms and the names were friendly or "cool" ways to refer to them rather than by number/letters. I doubt they were allocated for use for a particular airport or region.
I have lots of fond memories of working there as a cleaner sad to see it in such disrepair
Nice 1970s architecture. Evidence such as the overhead projectors used in training rooms points to the mid 90s being the last time some of these rooms were used.
Mid-90s? They were used in many colleges for at least another decade. I saw them in the mid-2000s all over the place!
@@DaibhidhBhoAlba ok 👍
@@DaibhidhBhoAlba Yup, the university I work at finally 'retired' the old OHPs from classrooms in 2012, so way, way beyond the mid-90s. By nearly 20 years.
The simulator at 13:44 is like that because they've removed the mirror cell, which is a component of the collimated display system that they use.
The cabin trainers are actually purpose-built by the manufacturer; they weren’t once “actual planes.”
Sometimes not built by the aircraft manufacturers but other firms too.
10:38 what was this room used for with the filing cabinets with different airline names??
amazing cockpits
10hours wow!! That’s some shift guys 👌🏻
Sad to see a PLANE simulater die
Thank you for this both parts were extremely interesting. Such a waste of furniture, plus buildings that will be demolished due to use of what we know now to be dangerous building materials. It was good to see this. Thank you.
@Stormtrooper1488 What a moronic stance... there is clearly a reason that they have left it standing rather than demolishing it outright. For all you know they intend on renovating it.
@@harrier331 That won't happen, the building is full of asbestos which is why BA abandoned the building
@@ilkleytom Any future use of the building/land would also require the removal of the asbesdos so I hardly see that as an argument when they could infact just make safe the asbesdos which has become a hazard, there are many buildings open and functioning right now which are riddled with asbesdos.
@Stormtrooper1488 Doesn't change the fact that the new owners may want to sell equipment with a current value such as components of the simulators.
those tv's may be outdated but I bet they still work
Most of those simulators are obsolete now, imagine that's why they were just left.
They won’t have bothered moving the simulators on as most airlines have retired those aircraft types.
When I last visited the UK in 2009, British Airways were in the process of retiring the 737-400. I am not sure when they did retire the last one.
You guys are really interesting.
This should be on discovery channel!!
great video yet again a shame to see it all go to waste.
They left the aircraft simulators that are not on their fleet anymore, absolutely crazy money still potentially there. Sad really bur great footage
But as the narrator says - strange that they weren't donated to a museum (assuming no airline wanted them)
@@fToo all valuable parts are stripped and repurposed. Anything left costs more to safely dismantle and move than to let it sit and be demolished when the site ever gets cleaned up
The amount of money it took to build that place with all of the details inside.
dam love this vid i wish i was there too see this
at 6.35 the wierd decor is ba world heritage tail fins designs from the 90's
Is it possible to take some office stuf from that location? For example a whiteboard or some good chairs and tables? It is heavy to move this trough the bushes i gues, but it might be possible right. Or make an arrangement with the manager of that location and the security guards ? Also some cockpit stuff could be sold on ebay market for the flight sim enthousiasts.
You mean steal
That wouldn't be allowed plus good Urban explorers do not do that. Hardly likely any of it would work now with how ruined the building was
At 6:27 there are some BA ethnic art tiles on the ground. I would expect that these are worth some money. Are you allowed to take items away from a derelict site like this? I think you could find some great bounty in there. 😊
@KevPotter21 and leave nothing but footprints
A flight-simmers wet dream....
That weird decor are the old tail art that BA used to have on its fleet on the 90s
10:45 - Some Thomas Cook signs
Amazing captures from the BA training facility. I am wondering when the BA trining center was abandoned? Which year?
My hope is that most of the stuff that is left is because it didn’t sell at a location switch sale and auction and wasn’t left without removal attempt
6:26 some project utopia artwork leant against the wall.
Better there, than on aircraft tails.
757 sim, my favourite aircraft.
These are not out of service aircraft. They are just mockups, with maybe some parts from aircraft, such as the emergency exit doors, seating etc.
The aircraft mockups are types not used by BA anymore.
3 minutes before the video starts, nice
wow thats new
I think the "Weird Decor" in the Flight sim room, was from the time when BA went a bit off kilter and put all that oddball ethnic art on the tails of all they're planes. Turned out a total failure, as no one knew who the planes belonged to as they were all different.
I call nonsense on that. The word "British Aiways" is emblazoned in large lettering at the front of the planes, so how can someone not identify what airline is it?
Nah, it was nationalist sentiments, the same sentiments that brought Brexit, that led the change. I distinctly recall Thatcher taking a hankerchief and covering the tail of a model BA plane, haughtily saying "We fly the British flag, not these awful things".
Perhaps this wing was outdated and leased to other airlines before decomissioning. I saw "ARIK AIR" on one of the whiteboards and several filing cabinets with Thomas Cook on them, perhaps they were who it was leased to?
I seen the Thomas cook logo after the 757 simulator areas. BA retired the 757 in 2010 and Thomas cook operated the 757 until 2019, so I think you’re absolutely spot on. Thomas cook changed their logo around 2013/2014 so they could have used it for a few years.
It's common for small airlines to lease simulator time and resources from bigger airlines without necessarily taking over a whole area. Since it is extremely expensive to set up for a relatively small airline like Thomas Cook.
BA sell time on the simulators to a number of different airlines. They even maintain a Boeing 787 simulator for Virgin at the new training centre. It all helps them keep the cost of training their own pilots to a minimum.
Pretty awesome place, I wonder where they do all this stuff now? Surely they still have to do training and simulations etc?
It all got moved just down the road near Hatton Cross
Top floor at TBC I think…
@@stephenbland7461 some on the 9th floor, and the Sims are over the road