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back to article Watch a 747 refit in just 105 seconds

Australia's flag carrier Qantas has released a video showing, in just 105 seconds, how it rips the guts out of a 747-400's passenger cabins, spruces them up, repaints the plane and then sends it back to work. We'd have liked it to run a little longer and offer more detail, but the results are still rather fine. Watch Video …

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  1. Stephen 2

    Pretty cool

    Fun to watch although as you said, it would be nice to have a bit of info about the whole thing.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      oops

      Did you notice the two bolts that were left over after the refit.....

      Hope they are not too importa............................

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  2. Martin Budden Silver badge

    Painting the outside of a 747 - timelapse with some more detail. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmxbZpSXNvI&feature=related

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    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      And one for Virgin Atlantic's rather handsome new livery:

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZAc2IOpBr4

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  3. bazza Silver badge

    Old but cool

    They've been around for a while, but jumbos are still cool in a big engineering sense.

    Also it's good to see that there's some sectors of industry that are still building things to last and be renewed along the way. The aviation industry has got used to aircraft lasting decades, and so that's how they're built. The extreme example is the B52 - the US military are planning on running those to at least 2040 apparently, by which time they'll be nearly 100 years old.

    Other industries (e,g, cars) seems to give the impression that they believe that that sort of business model stifles innovation and progress. Cars (especially American ones) are not built to last or be viable beyond a few years. But look at how new aircraft have changed, and look at the upgrade kits (better engines, etc) that you can get for old aircraft. There's no reason why cars shouldn't be built with that sort of life cycle in mind.

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    1. chris 233
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      Re: Old but cool

      > There's no reason why cars shouldn't be built with that sort of life cycle in mind.

      Yes, there is. Money and corporate greed!

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    2. SkippyBing
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      Re: Old but cool

      The difference is the B-52 gets a lot less use than your average airliner, as do all military aircraft. It costs the military to use them whereas it costs an airline not to. If BA were operating the B-52 it would have run out of airframe life years ago!

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    3. Darryl
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      Re: Old but cool

      Buffalo Airways flies 60-70 year old DC3's, DC4's, and C-46's as well as 50+ year old Electras daily in one of the harshest climates on the planet. TV show about them is pretty good too..

      http://www.buffaloairways.com/

      http://www.icepilots.com/

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I took a trip to the Boeing factory while I was in Seattle last year; fascinating, not just to see the scale of the place and the planes being built but to see how the manufacturing process has evolved over 40 years from the 747 line to the Dreamliner. It's a totally different way of doing things from one end of the building to the other - the 747s are made almost from the individual component parts whilst the Dreamliner is nailed together from completed lumps shipped in from all over the world.

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  5. Mostly_Harmless Silver badge

    wrong music

    This video is pretty cool, but it'd be better if they ditched the synthy sonic backdrop and replaced it with the Benny Hill music

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    1. Graham Bartlett
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      Windows

      Re: wrong music

      And a fat bloke with a paintbrush being chased by a lot of bare-breasted flight attendants, presumably?

      (PS. The Benny Hill music is called "Yakety Sax".)

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  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    As it happens.....

    You can polish a turd!

    That plane could have been run into the ground by one airline, sold to Quantas, quick tart up job and all the paying punters think its a nice shiny new plane..... until it falls out of the sky lol

    Sure hope they don't refit engines/mechanicals in the same slapdash manner.

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    1. Steve Knox
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      Paris Hilton

      Re: As it happens.....

      You do know that was a time lapse film, don't you?

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