The maintenance area for the Miniatur Wunderland airport – Photo: David Parker Brown | AirlineReporter
Over the years, I have had many people email me, tag me, and in other ways share with me videos of the Miniatur Wunderland airport, which is located in Hamburg, Germany. I enjoyed watching each one and was quite impressed with the videos. That said, no words, no video, no photos, not even this story can come close to convey just how freak’n awesome this place is!
When I was preparing for my recent trip to Hamburg, Lee Zerrilla, was telling me I needed to go to Miniatur Wunderland. I think my initial reaction was, “dude, this where a bunch of old people go to look at train sets?” No. He pointed out that not only was it way beyond just train sets, but this is also the location where all those videos had been taken… I was now very interested and made it my mission to check this place out.
I was set to arrive in Hamburg at about 11:00am local time and didn’t have any media events planned until the next morning. That almost never happens — most media trips are packed full of (mostly) good stuff. I always appreciate having some of my own time to explore the area — and Miniatur Wunderland was #1 on my list. I asked Jason Rabinowitz to tag along, who was also scheduled to arrive somewhat early, and we penciled in to head to downtown. He stated that he had been before, but he was totally down to going again — score!
This story was originally published on NYCAviation.com and shared with permission.
The more hours you have in your logbook, the cleaner your shirt is. By the time a pilot gets to the captain’s seat at a commercial airline, he or she has spent years wearing a white shirt while doing blue collar work, but their passengers will never know to what extent. Blue collar is not the image the public sees. What they see is a white uniform shirt with icons and symbolism dripping from the pilot’s shoulders and chest announcing experience, but it really represents the unglamorous hours spent behind the scenes, drenched in fuel, coffee, oil, and blue juice.
From the first flight lesson to pre-flighting a heavy, pilots get used to wearing (and avoiding) petroleum products. Sumping fuel tanks, wiping dripping brakes, checking hydraulic and oil levels, and brushing up against leading edges smashed with bug guts all while keeping a white shirt clean is a learned talent; by the time pilots start flying corporate, they have it perfected.
Corporate passengers don’t realize that it’s sometimes one of the pilots who had to jump on a tug and move the aircraft out of the hangar onto the ramp. In the winter, pilots have also shoveled and plowed snow in front of the hangar. Then, the pilots have not only pre-flighted and prepped the aircraft, checked the weather, filed a flight plan, made the coffee, loaded the ice, soda, snacks, newspaper, magazines, and catering, but they’ve also cleaned the wastebaskets, checked the lavatory blue juice levels, and made sure there was enough toilet paper. Very glamorous.
RA-64518 preparing for the long journey to Komsomolsk-na-Amure on the ramp at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport – Photo: Bernie Leighton | AirlineReporter
Preface: As I was stepping off my flight onto a hard stand at Domodedovo, I learned that Aeroflot was purchasing Transaero. What that will mean for Transaero is unclear at this time. What I can assume, however, is that Aeroflot’s dislike of oddball fleet types puts Transaero’s three Tupolev Tu-214s in extreme danger and that makes me sad. It also made the fact that I have now flown on a Tu-214 that much more important. The things that I had to do to get that flight — they might cause the standard AvGeek to go mad!
The last thing I wanted to do was break my wife’s arm, but that’s what happened as I tried to get her through the narrow door of the plane’s lavatory. It wasn’t intentional of course, but there is not enough room inside for a helper and a disabled person to be in the lavatory at the same time. So rather than stepping in first and safely pulling her in, I tried to move her in backwards. That turned out to be a big mistake.
We learned the hard way. The lavatory door had the ’œwheelchair accessible’ symbol. One would have thought it would at least be safe, albeit inconveniently narrow. However, the little on-board wheelchair (a.k.a. aisle chair) wouldn’t fit through the lavatory door. What was to be a relaxing and fun vacation with friends in San Antonio became instead a five-day stay at a Texas hospital for my wife. We have learned that life with a disability means we continually make adjustments. Sometimes the best laid plans can go astray.
Not an angle that one sees often of a Boeing 747-400
“We actually don’t do that work here. For that kind of thing, we have to ship it out to Lufthansa Technik in Germany.” If you talk to a great number of airline maintenance employees around the world, you’ll probably hear that line a few times. Many airlines are capable of doing their own aircraft maintenance, but few locations in the world take MRO (Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul) to the level Lufthansa Technik does.
Airlines around the world send their aircraft to Technik for jobs ranging from a mandatory C check to a nose-to-tail cabin refurbishment. Recently, I was invited to tour Technik’s facilities in Hamburg, Germany, which is just one of their multiple full-service locations around the world.
One of the black light inspection areas in Lufthansa Technik Engine Shop – Photo: Jason Rabinowitz
Our first stop on the Engine Services center. Engines are, by far, some of the most expensive parts on any aircraft. Most airlines perform only minor maintenance on their engines, but in the Engine Services center, several engines were completely torn down for a total rebuild.
