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1977: The Sky Above... The Earth Below | Classic BBC Documentary | BBC Archive
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29:31Now PlayingDavid Jason narrates this information-packed documentary looking at the people who make air travel possible, from the pilots to the air traffic controllers and other unheralded but essential workers.
Captain Bjarnason, who lives on the outskirts of Reykjavík, is the pilot of Icelandair's Boeing 727, Gullfaxi, the country's first jetliner. Though he has never met them, Captain Bjarnason relies on people like Derek Rams and Anne Carlton, who work at Gailes Radar Station in Ayrshire, and Stuart Wright who works at Redbrae house. They are Air Traffic Controllers who monitor over 400 aircraft a day in the Scottish Flght Information Region - covering some 146,000 square miles of sky.
The Sky Above... The Earth Below follows Icelandair Flight 230 from Keflavik to Glasgow, Loganair Flight 2356 from Barra to Glasgow, and Aerlingus Flight 223 from Glasgow to Dublin, detailing how pilots, air traffic controllers, and staff at Prestwick Airport work together to passengers on these planes - and hundreds of other flights - safely to their destinations.
Clip taken from The Sky Above ... The Earth Below, originally broadcast on BBC One Scotland, 30 September, 1977.
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