The Beating heart of an A350 (A350-1000 avionics bay)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.พ. 2025
- Hello everyone, now a video of the A350 avionics bay with a more indepth components location.
Enjoy the crawl through.
#aviation #airbusa350 #airbus #avgeek #aviationlovers
I've been an engineer for the A350 my entire career. Cabin, hydraulics, high lift systems, flight controls, air conditioning. I was in copy of the telemetry during the first flight test. I never saw the interior of the aircraft, but only drawings, 3D models and schematics.
Until now.
Thanks
Awesome, you and your colleagues did an excellent job.
Hello I want to work for Airbus as an mechanical design engineer, can you give me some advice to apply ? Thanks !!
Really a lack of thinking in management, they should have invited all designers to browse, you bet *the management* got the opportunity.
How can you be a A350 engineer your entire career without ever seeing inside one?
@@Tom32145_ ... Probably cause 10,000 people work at the factory, not everyone gets to tour the entire aircraft, much less ride in one. They're probably lucky to see the first unit roll of the assembly line 🤔 ✌🏽
"You hope we found it interesting..."😲
Are you serious? It is A-W-E-S-O-M-E !!! 😍 Impressive engineering into the air.
Thanks
my thoughts exactly haha
This is definitely the part of a modern passenger airplane that very few people will ever see. Good video of all the modern electronics on an Airbus A350.
Glad you enjoyed it.
Superlative aviation technologies. A gold standard technician.
The craziest thing about that equipment bay is that you can shut the ENTIRE AIRCRAFT down on the ground with the flip of a few switches, and conversely you can start it up with a few switches as well. ALL of that equipment will boot up and talk to each other in the correct sequence with zero input from the cockpit. Cold and dark, to 100% up and running with (hopefully) no faults with a few switches - to me, that's the most amazing thing of all! Anyone in the networking world will understand lol.
It doesn’t always start up without any fault, there is power switching as not all systems come online at the same time. But in a minute you have more or less the important stuff running, but it takes about 8 minutes for everything to be started up.
@@dennisvijverbergbrakesrele6098 RAT shedding and OIS!
to wake up the 900 is a procedure you must follow, cant just hit few switches and everything is ready. don't know about the 1000 as we are expected to get them soon, and I never go into the E&E thru the outside latch, always thru the CP floor
@ it’s the same
no, the crazy thing is that even an outdated CPU from 20 years ago has enough computing power to do everything these computers need to do to fly the plane (maybe not all modern extras regarding passenger convenience) but for redundancy you have these like 30 or 50 (I didn't count) computers.
Most people do not have the slightest idea what it takes to build and operate such en aircraft. This gives you a tiny glimpse of what is needed. Thank you.
none of this is needed. this is just really bad engineering. they make trivial things look difficult. some of these things had a billet milled front. Like it supported the wings.
@@DanFrederiksen of course you know better than the entirety of Airbus engineers. I'll trust your words over theirs. this is literally one of the dumbest things I've read in over 30 years that I've been on the internet.
@bojcio lol. I know I'm only a polymath genius computer scientist, father of deep learning and smartest man in the world but try to realize that you are arguing from blind faith in a perceived authority rather than any actual insight or intelligence. Would I be right to assume you have no electronics or computer engineering skills? nor general aviation engineering insight. I however do. I can see from a statistical stand point you might assume I don't know better than them but I'm not a statistical average. What airliner makers do in the avionics bay is for some reason very dumb. If you have some insight into aviation you might know what synthetic vision is. Even the brand new A350 doesn't have synthetic vision. That's another way to see that these boys are often headless chickens in a bureaucracy. Some of what airbus does is naturally pretty good engineering, other things are not. You might also recall Boeing designing a pilot 'assistance' system that resulted in 2 crashes because it knew better than the pilot and applied more force than they could hold. You might be able to understand that designing a system to overpower a pilot is a risky design philosophy. Maybe not.
@@DanFrederiksen can u explain specifically what is bad, and why it is bad ?
@@Lumiobyte fair question. It's easiest to see with the units that are just information handling, no power electronics. For example at 4:27 there is a VOR-2 unit. VOR is an old radio navigation system that listens to a radio beacon (from 1946). Two antennas on the ground and you listen to phase difference to tell the direction. This is completely trivial stuff that's in any small plane avionics as part of more functionality. It just listens, no transmission. A smartphone has 5-7 radio systems, some that transmit and they are many generations more advanced. This functionality that is this huge box is completely trivial electronics that could be handled by a couple of square millimeters of PCB in the cockpit electronics. To place that functionality in the avionics bay here requires the box, the rack, the plugs and routing oversized wires back and forth to the cockpit. The 3 other boxes next to it are similarly trivial functionality. Imagine an engineer offering you a smartphone and it has 8 of these boxes attached to it that you have to carry around and that engineer says that that's good engineering. You see?
This plane isn't an AI data warehouse servicing the entire world. What this plane does could fit behind a small panel in the cockpit with 1990s technology.
Today's computing tech is so sophisticated that an intel 486 processor would be so small that you couldn't see it (0.0035mm2) and it could run 200 times faster. What they are doing in that avionics bay would probably be poor engineering in 1985. And indeed it looks like it's straight out of 1985. I wouldn't be one bit surprised if the culture of doing it in these clumsy boxes is from that time and they just never questioned it since.
"... we need a lot less boxes, and a lot less boxes means a lot less weight." But I've never seen so many boxes outside a Google datacenter! This is incredible stuff. You sit in your seat, watch your movie, have a snooze, and arrive. Yet all this stuff is going on beneath your feet.
Yes indeed.
Too many complex systems with high reliance on nothing going wrong, Im never flying again.
@@ezekielchariot on the contrary, the important systems expect things to go wrong, which is why there's a backup to the backup for them. There's multiple primary and secondary computers for the FBW system, for example, plus multiples of each sensor so the ADIRUs can figure out when they start speaking nonsense.
Part of the seemingly complex system is redundancy :)
@@ezekielchariotok dont, but those systems are there to make it safe. Or just count how many times he mentions primary/secondary, triple redundancy, backup etc.
The key word for this kind of system is "dependable". Quite an opposite of what we got in normal systems.
I’m looking for the comment from the guy who says “You can run all that on a raspberry pi”
Most thorough tour of an avionics bay I've ever seen!
Thanks, now I'm all set to fix my A350.
I'd recommend calling a technician 😉
@@dennisvijverbergbrakesrele6098 i didn't buy it to have "technicians" work on it -- i bought it to learn myself! :-P
😂
Magnificent, this is one of the best tour to see the art of complication,thanks so much for sharing this experience.
It is indeed awesome
There's a real data center on planes!
Thank you for this marvelous tour 👍🏼
Yes indeed! It's a marvel of modern engineering.
Except this data center is also capable of withstanding higher external radiation, mechanical stress, temperature deviation, pressure loss, a wide band of humidity levels, and even fire or incapable pilots!
@ 🎯👌
So. Many. Things. To go wrong!
And from so many different companies.
Absolutely amazing. This is why I get tears of amazement every time I fly ✈️
Wonderful video, VERY interesting! One of my favorite things is to hear the fans and airflow of the boxes. Beautiful boxes, all working together to produce a fantastic result: We can fly over the oceans, and thanks to men like yourself. You are the key to sustained perfection! Thanks for your priceless service. When I was young and operating a TV transmitter in a big city, there were so many fans, so much cooling, wonderful sounds, this brings back great memories.
Well said. And I can relate. As an aviation enthusiast and retired television broadcast engineer there is nothing like the sound of cooling fans in a Transmitter hall. Cheers from Down Under. This video also demonstrates the other engineering disciplines involved in getting these machines into the air.
It's great to hear that you appreciate the sounds of the avionics bay! It the music of this video 😬
When you think 1903 was the first powered flight its hard to believe how far technology was advanced in the last century, and how many teams of people go into designing & building something this complex & ensuring all the systems talk to each other. It's just mind blowing.
Indeed we have come a long way.
The difference between the Lancaster bomber and the Vulcan was 10 years.
Some years ago I worked on the SFCC of the A350. Really amazing to see it it it's final place - thanks for this video!
wow, this is very complex engineering. Thank you for sharing
You're welcome!
Work of art that avionics bay, thanks for sharing!
Glad you enjoyed it
Thanks Dennis! When I graduated from tech school in Nov, 1968 I went to work 2 days later at Collins Radio Co in Cedar Rapids, IA as a Test Technician on the 51RV2B VOR/ILS/MB receiver. Same form factor, black box with the red Collins badge at the top as the newer VOR/MB shown in the A350. Brought back a lot of memories.
Glad you enjoyed the video. It’s great to see how far the technology has come since your days with Collins Radio.
@@dennisvijverbergbrakesrele6098 I don't know, it seems he's saying the VOR box from 1968 is pretty much the same thing as the one on the world's newest operational widebody. I frankly wouldn't be surprised if it actually is the very same thing given VOR is 1940s/1950s technology.
Thanks You Dennis for sharing this video .. this is one of the most comprehensive video clips showing the heart of the A350 Airbus avionics and power systems ... it's like a complete company on-prem datacenter!
It’s nice that you appreciate the detail in the video!
Amaising video, there is a very complex system underneath of the cookpit and super interesting, It's the first time that I discovered such view of the avion's control tech
It's amazing how much stuff is in there, glad you enjoyed it!
A truly unique and amazing view of the avionics bay. I'm amazed how all this complexity seems to work so reliably. Great video!
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it.
Awesome video thank you so much for the tour, I loved every inch of it
Glad you enjoyed!
I've crawled around alot of the older airliner E/E (avionics) bays back in the day (737, 767, MD-80, DC-10 etc) Love to see it in a modern aircraft! Thank you for sharing!
Me too, the smaller once are a bit of a tight squeeze
This is good to see with sharp focus. Thank you!
Thank you so much for sharing, I love seeing secret rooms and behind doors that are closed to nearly everyone
Very interesting. Even more interesting is the fact that someone's allowed to film and share on youtube : )
Why wouldn't you be allowed? This is a civilian aircraft that's been bought by hundreds of countries by now. There are deep technical manuals you can download that go way deeper than this even. 😁
A question
@@TactileCoderyou write hundreds of countries but theres not even hundreds...
@@TactileCoderand almost never in history someone working on safety critical systems would have been allowed. So you ought to think about that "why" a bit more on your own instead of being puzzled.
@@udirt 190-212 countries, depending on the territorial disputes. Educate yourself.
Very, very cool! Thank you for posting.
Thanks, great job. Regards from Spain.
Many thanks!
Great overview, certainly alot going on, its great work airbus do when you consider this is only the soul of the aircraft, just one system.
Thanks for sharing this video.
Great video - as a former broadcast engineer (and avgeek), it's interesting to see all of these redundancies and systems (here I was thinking we had some bespoke stuff!!)
Subscribed!
Thank you Dennis! Bedankt!!
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it and welcome to the channel.
Hi Dennis, I was happy to see the difference and so much room now than before in the Avionics Bay 👌👍🙏God Bless All our Design Engineers.
Hello, yes there is some space to move around
@@dennisvijverbergbrakesrele6098 Well done Good People. We Salute You 👌👍🙏 C'est Tres Bien.
All I can say is that this tour was mind-boggling....😮
Great video! Thank you for sharing.
You are welcome!
Excellent video. Thanks for the tour!
You’re welcome, glad you enjoyed it.
Absolutely INTERESTING! Thank You for the tour!
Glad you enjoyed it
Wow, I never imagined that modern planes still had stuff like this. They basically took the huge engineers station that used to be in the cockpit
and shoved it under the plane and automated much of it. I thought by now they would have shrunk all of this down smaller, thats still a huge compartment for avionics.
Also pressurised and heated for those clandestine trips you don't want anyone to know about :D :D :D
thanks for showing us the avionics of A350
Glad you enjoyed it!
@dennisvijverbergbrakesrele6098 yeah it was detained tour, tnx
This was incredible as you forget all the electronics that makeup an airplane 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
Glad you enjoyed the peek into the avionics bay!
i love planes, and watch a lot of aviation youtube. i love electronics, too -- it's been a hobby my whole life as well as a profession at times. and somehow, an "avionics bay" has never crossed my mind. maybe i thought the cockpit was everything?! i have no idea but thank you so much for sharing this! cheers from alaska
Glad you enjoyed the video and welcome to the world of avionics!
Wow this is much more extensive than I would have guessed. Almost looks like a telecom central office in there! Had no idea there was that much space and that much equipment bays.
What an awesome video. Many thanks 👌
You are welcome
It's neat to see the inner workings of the 350, something most people would not think about, had relatives that worked for Boeing, and got to see the rack cabinets for the 757, there's' definitely a lot more equipment here.I noticed the Thales and Collins components, I worked on X-ray equipment and saw the Thales Detectors for imaging equipment. Thanks for making the video
And that's why I would never fly with Airbus. Any complexity only leads to problems. 🤮🤮Moreover, it is a patchwork of several factories all over Europe.🤦♂
very cool please keep showing these types of videos, they are very educational for people to get a good appreciation of how much it takes for a plane and the equipment and skill to keep it in the air.
Will keep making these kind of content
Complex systems, a marvel of engineering 👌 ❤🙏🏻🙌🙏🏻🙌
Airplanes still the pinnacle of human engineering tbh
Super cool great tour
Great tour thank you! As an IT guy by day, I get the familiar feeling of being in a data center when I see those equipment cages. I suppose a failure at 40000ft over the ocean is a whole different animal than a server blade failing in a DC.
Redundancy is built in, as long there is no cascading failure and single failure should not be a problem for flight
Same, senior system engineer here and this merges two of my favorite things: planes and computers.
Actually a very interesting insight into a modern Airbus. Thank you !
My pleasure!
Amazing, thanks by this fantastic video.
Glad you enjoyed it!
That is a technology cathedral : very impressive to see and surely amazing to know that following cabin configuration and options chosen by Airlines, each ebay is impacted. Huge engineering behind the scene ❤
Glad you enjoyed it!
The amount of engineering is just mind boggling and the amount of things that could go wrong and yet its still one of the safest forms of transport. unbelievable!
I really appreciate this video, because it enlightens me on the different components and the intricate details that causes an airplane to stay in the air.👍
Or go wrong and fall out
Remarkable, so much dust everywhere!
Thank you for the video. It was very interesting to watch.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Standing on the shoulders of the Wright Brothers. Scientific technology is amazing, and the human brain is the greatest computer.
I've been a Network Engineer for 10+ years...I've been inside some datacenters with less computing power (or at least boxes) than this system. It is beautiful and unfathomably complex I'm sure. I'm in awe simply imagining the manhours and design that went into making sure every single box, sensor, connection, etc. works flawlessly and in perfect harmony, reliably, for years or maybe even decades on end.
Yes, a lot of effort is put in to make everything work
There probably is more compute power in one of your servers than all these boxes combined, but it’s still interesting g
Not meaning to start an A vs B drama, but the wiring looms shown here seem so much neater than that shown in another channel's tour of a 777 avionics bay.
Airbus does not play funny games when they build planes, It's serious business. I feel safer flying Airbus than Boeing
Dude really?? Do you realize how much older the 777 design is? Maybe you need to look at video from 787 instead
Really broo@@puerco911
@@puerco911 not sure you'll like it th-cam.com/video/BkpLEuCGW8k/w-d-xo.html
Makes it easier for the accident investigators to trace.
IMPRESSIVE! I once flew on the A350-900 with Scandinavian Airlines from Oslo, Norway to Newark, New Jersey. A very fine aircraft indeed!! ❤❤✈️✈️
It is a great aircraft to fly on, I have handled SAS. A350 in the past, they currently fly there A330 to Miami.
Thank you. Without this video, I would had never known the inside engineering.
You're welcome! 😄
Thank you, never thougt it would be this big and so many devices
I'd call it the brain, the hydraulic pumps the heart, and the engines the legs. But I know it's just semantics. Great video! The redundant systems and multiple sensors and flight computers add to the number of boxes, but it's still a ton of stuff!
thank-you very much for this tour sir .
My pleasure!
Thank you for this very interesting video 👍
Glad you enjoyed it
Wow, very impressive. I was aware that there was lots of avionics, but this is more computing power than small nations all in one confined space.
This is awesome! I've always wondered why ram air turbine powers such limited number of systems. Well, there's so many of them. I've thought there'd be 20% of the electronics at max.
Thanks for showing this. pretty cool
My pleasure, glad you enjoyed it!
I always imagined it to be way smaller like a crawl space. but this seems easily serviceable has a nice modulair design!
It is!
Great Video. Thanks. Two questions please. 1) Are the circuit breakers with white clips redundant systems that only need to be engaged in special circumstances. 2) is this bay accessible to the crew in flight?
The clip cb's are for systems not installed and or the have room to modify and upgrade the aircraft.
Crew could enter it, but there would be no need to do so in flight.
Thank you for the insight!
I see massive room for consolidation, and consequent power and weight reduction, but I guess aviation industry is heavily regulated and as such they is very conservative. Additionally, it looks like things are meant to be quickly replaced for short downtime.
Unglaublich, dass all diese Komponenten ohne Probleme zusammenarbeiten und das Tag und Nacht für viele Jahrzehnte ‼️😲
Sehr beeindruckend ❕👍🏼
Danke für's Zeigen 🙏🏼😊
Lieben Gruß aus Berlin 🇩🇪,
Ramsi 🙋🏻♂️
I love these keep uploading!
Thanks! I am glad you like it.
Amazing! Wright brothers to this.
Very Impressive ! Much more than i thought. How much computers in total ? thanks for the video.
A lot
Thank you for the tour of Aurbis A350 systems. One airline we frequent just changed to A350 for the route we travel with them.... so when I saw this video, I decided to watch and see what is inside this new model plane the airline is using. 26 years ago, then the same route was flying Boeing 767. A while ago I saw a video where I understand Boeing 767's are nearly obsolete.
Glad you enjoyed the video and found it interesting. There are still many B767’s around but yes it’s older technology.
@@dennisvijverbergbrakesrele6098 Say, I guess I have wondered.... how well insulated are the avionics bay areas under the seating? Outside of the aircraft temperatures show pretty cold while flying. I would assume the lower areas of the plane inside do not get that cold as the outside temperatures, correct?
This is like a kind of videos where ones have fun and others are just watching 🙂
Wow, I knew the A350 must have a lot of electrical components etc, but this is insane! Makes you wonder how they make sure everything is correctly connected .
There's a lot of checks and testing before the aircraft leaves the factory. And if components are replaced also testing needs to be done.
Very informative. Thanks very much Sir.
i am doing an easa part 66 course hoping to be a b2, i am happy i found your channel and enjoyed your video Dennis, Hopefully I can do what you do one day thank you for your videos, they are very insightful
Thanks! Glad to hear the videos are helping you with your studies.
Man, as someone whos only worked avionics and E&E for F35s this is quite a culture shock lol. So much room! haha
You can “dance” in this one 😬
It gives you a great sense of the complexity of a modern airliner
Bang up job, friend!
Thanks! Nice and interesting to see some other parts of an airplain
Glad you enjoyed it!
Amazing, Thanks 🙂✈️
Wonderful. Why are the batteries held down by such complex articulated and heavy duty clamps please? I realise they are heavy, but looking at the weights published on each item in your video, some heavy stuff isn’t nearly so securely fixed nor in such a complex way. Thank you 😊
They are about 30KG, they really don’t want them to move.
That looks like it would generate a lot of heat, so I would assume it's air conditioned in there! The logistics of fitting all this, must take quite a while to install. Does everyone good to see and appreciate just what it takes to build a modern aircraft and understand the number of suppliers required. From seats, lighting, toilets, galleries, pilots cabin then all of this on top of the main structure of the aircraft. Truly amazing.
There is a ventilation system installed, two blower fan and two suction fans, air conditioning system is used as a backup.
The area itself is not temperature controlled.
This is quite interesting to see, I work for a company we make similar “boxes” to these for the safety equipment. Seeing it in sheet metal then to this… quite amazing
Thanks for awesome video😊
Glad you liked it
Great video. Super interesting. I know modern aircraft are as capable as they are complex (seen here). But what amazes me is how the industry gets away without flight engineers, even with designed redundancy. There is so much that can go wrong. 🤷
As many systems are now automated the flight engineer is just not needed anymore. But if to many automated systems should fail and pilots would need to do too many items manually the aircraft would become grounded, due to the increased workload of the pilots.
Thanks for the quick look around, Dennis. They seem to have a problem with dust and debris accumulation in those compartments. What steps are taken to limit and clean it up? There will clearly be a fire hazard at some point.
Fascinating. If I remember rightly that you said there were 3 primary flight control computers (FCCs) and three secondary FCCs. Are each of those groups of 3 essentially acting as a single voting unit I.e. they’re basically acting as one computer but for every control output or sensor report that the software generates there is a check that all 3 computers have come up with the same result and if not then typically the majority (2 out of the 3 computers agreeing) is taken as the actionable result probably with a warning raised.
I ask because the fact they are grouped into 3 reminded me of a common strategy for radiation-hardened CPU architectures where on-chip stuff is triple-replicated with voting e.g. a 32 bit register in your home PC or phone will just have 32 bits of storage in the CPU whereas in many radiation-hardened CPUs there will be 3 x 32 bits of storage to hold the contents of that 32 bit register and when the CPU reads the register each bit is actually stored in 3 different locations and the result returned is the majority vote in order to protect against a photon of radiation causing a bit-flip in a single storage location which is more of a concern in satellite electronics. (There are typically other protection measures as well.)
For the primary flight controls surface, ailerons, elevators, THS, and rudder there are 5 controllers involved,
PRIM-PRIM-SEC-SEC-BCM (backup control module). The first will calculate and execute, all others will check and will take over if first one fails. Depending control surface each a different PRIM will be like the master. For example right elevator PRIM 3 is the master and PRIM 1 is it for the left one etc.
@@dennisvijverbergbrakesrele6098why does it need 5? What could cause 4 to fail? Are the primary and secondary in a different part of the server room?
Very cool video. One question though, why are so many circuit breakers "blocked" with those white clamps? Doesn't that keep them from functioning correctly?
These breaker are not used or are not connected to anything. Just installed for future modifications.
This is absolutely amazing how did i not found your channel before!, i'm amazed that they use NiCD batteries, not even NiMH!
787 uses (or used?) lithium ion. Doesn’t look like others have picked it up yet.
Lithium batteries are an option, NICD still works but is a bit heavier.
@@dennisvijverbergbrakesrele6098an option on a350 or 787? Also looks like a350 didn’t go full electric like 787. As cool as electric everything is to me (as an EE), there’s for sure a case for bleed air!
Very cool, merci!😊
You are very welcome!
Is the noise due to engines running, avionics' bay AC or other aircraft on the airport? (asking for a friend)
The noise is from the equipment cooling that is blowing air through the ducts to the racks.
Holy crap Batman! What a crazy amount of hard/software. And that none of this is assessable during flight is a testament to the reliability of aircraft systems these days.
I missed that are❤😢..i can still smell the area and hear the gasper fan..the LRUs and CBs..
The wire looms & bundles are nicely secured..
I ❤ aviation
Thank you - really impressive
Thanks! Fascinating stuff. How's it all maintained? One engineer does everything or many engineers, each specialising in one or two of the modules?
One can do a transit, but if there are more maintenance tasks to be done you need more, to have the work done in a set time. Also you can’t do all tasks alone due to critical tasks, dual inspections and ETOPS regulations.
Thanks for the amazing tour! I had no idea of the data center sitting below the cabin. I imagine that this space is not accessible durning flight.
There is a hatch in the cockpit, but no one would normally go there in flight.
Its very interesting to see that all the equipment has quite distinct aesthetics event that it mounts to same rack standard. First I thought what a weird mess - but then as you progressed to have a bunch of equivalent CPIOM's, that are software defined universal blocks... now that is a mess to find when needed for replacement (but then, as you said, it can be easily reprogrammed)
Very interesting.