Season 2 · Episode 1

How to Build: A Super Jumbo Wing

Britain is one of the world leaders in aerospace manufacturing and there's one part of a plane the UK is reputed to make better than anyone else - the wings. It's often said that no matter what else is done and what innovations are introduced, the wing defines the aircraft. The A380 wing is the largest ever produced for a civil airliner, at 17.7 metres from front to back and 36.3 metres from fuselage to wingtip. The maximum length of metal in a single wing is 46 metres and the result is an aircraft with a tip-to-tip wingspan of 79.8 metres, making the A380 the world's biggest passenger aircraft. The film follows some of the people who work at the two main Airbus factories in the UK. In Filton, near Bristol (which has manufactured aircraft for almost 100 years, including Concorde) we meet engineers and designers at the company's cutting-edge research and development facility, and in Broughton, in North Wales, one of Europe's biggest factories, we meet the people who actually build the massive wing.