Original subtitles

- Hi, I'm Matthew Burchette.

And this is a "Behind the Wings"

at Denver International Airport.

That's Lucifer. You don't want to make him mad.

(theme music)

Now I say this a lot, but how cool is this?

(upbeat music)

You guys are getting a really inside look at this thing.

Not everyone gets to do that.

Bam. Bam.

Bam. Bam. Bam.

(upbeat music)

In the 1920s, Denver was in serious danger

of being left in the dust by Cheyenne

as a major air hub.

So the Denver aeronautical commission decided that

if Denver was to become a major air transportation center,

it needed to create the best airport facility

between St. Louis and the West coast.

They did and Denver Municipal Airport opened

on October 17th, 1929.

In 1944, Denver Municipal was renamed Stapleton Airfield

after Ben Stapleton, Denver's mayor,

when it was built in a major proponent of aviation.

Then in 1964, the airport was again renamed

to Stapleton International Airport.

By the 1980s, Stapleton had expanded

as much as was practical.

Air traffic continued to increase,

but the airport was exceeding its capacity

to handle all the traffic and passengers.

One major limitation was that the parallel runways

were too close together

and couldn't handle simultaneous instrument approaches

during low visibility.

After years of planning and construction,

Denver international airport was opened

on February 28th, 1995.

At that time, DIA was the first new major airport

to be built since Dallas-Fort Worth

more than 21 years earlier in 1974.

Before we go and check out DIA,

let's look at an artifact in our collection

that encapsulates Denver's airport history.

This is the progress of flight mural,

and it was actually in Stapleton Airport

up on the mezzanine level.

Now not an artifact is Jeff Reddy.

Jeff, thank you so much for being here.

Now, your dad was the Architect of record

for Stapleton Airport, which means that, basically,

he designed the thing.

- That's right.

Actually, my dad started working at Stapleton

back in early 1950s

and continued working really up until its closing.

- So did he actually have something to do with this as well?

- Yes, this mural was part of the terminal that was built

in 1962, roughly and opened in '64.

He worked very closely

with a local mosaic tile manufacturer,

working out the scale and the colors

and making sure everything fits.

So I was really happy that was able to be salvaged

and moved and it's here in the museum.

- Yeah, well we are really glad to have it

'cause it is a really interesting piece.

Now you also brought some stuff from your own collection

that probably nobody has ever seen for a really long time.

Can we take a look at that stuff?

- Let's do, I'd like to share it.

- Oh, excellent.

Wow. This is really cool.

This is something that you just don't see any more.

This is an actual watercolor.

- Right. This is dated 1952.

So at this point, Denver had realized

they really needed more terminal capacity

as well as airport capacity.

So this was a major project for Denver

to construct a new terminal.

Shown here is we have kind of the old iconic clock tower

that remained in place even as Stapleton expanded,

that clock tower stayed

and the new terminal was built around it.

This area is a corporate center for United Airlines.

Denver was United's home base,

it was their home up until the early 1970s.

So, United had a presence right on the terminal.

It was their main offices.

- And now tell me about this one.

I can see there's the clock tower again,

but this is completely different.

- Well, this was the concept that was started

in the early 1960s, because it was again obvious to Denver

that they needed much more capacity.

Jets were becoming passenger aircraft of choice

and Denver had to keep up with what was expanding.

So, this was a concept at the time.

It was not exactly followed.

As you can see, this has a very large hotel.

Denver was maybe a little in the forefront of

thinking of a hotel at their airport.

Not many airports had done that.

And so that was a part of the concept

that was not followed through, but really the terminal,

as it was constructed, pretty well followed this rendering.

- I love that they kept the clock tower.

I wish we had kept it.

And now here, again, there's the clock tower,

but they've kind of followed this circular pattern.

There's no hotel but this is dated 1979.

So this is definitely Stapleton.

- This is how it was finally constructed.

As you can see, we do have a new control tower.

- [Matthew] Right, which is still there.

- [Jeff] That's the only element of Stapleton

that's still in place, but--

- And then knowing that even with all of this,

we were going to need something more. Bam.

You guys come up with this,

which was a concept in '67,

for a whole new airport.

- Exactly. I think it became very apparent

to the Denver leadership that the airport was

gonna have to move sooner or later.

So this was a concept that was developed

in the Rocky Mountain Arsenal.

- Oh, so this was not really even thought to be out

at the DIA area.

- Not at this point.

I think even then we realized the arsenal was gonna be

a candidate and it was looked at even when DIA was built,

but it was really too restrictive in the amount of land

that was available at the arsenal,

which really directed them to move further East

and get a lot more real estate for a much bigger airport.

- Yeah. Like they always do.

You got to have more land.

Well, Jeff, thank you so much for being here

and bringing these amazing photos and renderings.

These guys have not seen the light of day in what?

30 or 40 years, probably.

- At least.

- Wow. That is really cool.

That is really special.

Now that you have the backstory of Denver's airports,

it's time to head over to our friends at DIA

to get an exclusive behind the scenes tour

of their facilities

and uncover their deep, dark secrets.

(soft upbeat music)

So this is the Jefferson terminal

and we're in the Great Hall.

And as you can see, it looks kind of a little bit slow today

at TSA.

How many people, though, do you have come through

every year?

- Over 61 million passengers navigate through our facility

- That's a ton of people.

What's kind of the average wait time?

- On off-peak period, it's going to vary.

We try to maintain approximately 15 minute wait time

or under.

- DIA has three areas for TSA Security.

- We do, we have three checkpoints

and we have one checkpoint that remains open 24/7

and then the other two checkpoints are generally open

from 4:00 AM to approximately 9:00 PM.

- So one of the things that's going on right now is

DIA is making some huge changes.

And this is actually one of the areas where you guys

are gonna make changes.

Now, right down in the middle,

right there with kind of the white baggage looking thing.

That's one of the changes you guys have already

implemented already.

- Traditionally screening lanes have been more linear.

And, so, you basically waited for the person in front of you

to process through the screening lane.

The automated screening lanes allow multiple people

to diverse or to take off their screened items

at the same time.

And, so you can see there's multiple drop locations

and you're not waiting for the person in front of you.

You can actually progress forward,

even if the person in front of you hasn't unloaded

in preparation for that screening process.

- Has that sped up the process?

- They say there's a significant increase

on those particular lanes.

And, so, hopefully, the idea would be that once we have

all lanes for automated screen lane,

that will definitely significantly increase our throw.

- Now it looks like there's not a TSA agent

actually looking at the screen.

So when you say automated,

it runs through the x-ray machine

and the x-ray machine figures out

through an algorithm or something that if there

might be something in the baggage that they need to flag.

- The technology assists the staffing of TSA

to identify any item that may be a threat

or requires additional screening.

- Now, one of the things that I've been told

that will be a drastic change in here,

and you don't have to answer this question or not,

but right now this is not really ideal.

Because here we are looking straight down.

And if I go right down to that far end

that's a clean area.

And if I really wanted to, I can drop something to somebody.

So that's going to change.

- That is going to change.

There is a vulnerability of having this vantage point

over the checkpoint.

And I think that that again is why we're moving

the direction we are to have the checkpoints on level six.

- That makes sense.

From the Great Hall I headed outside

to get a tour of the airfield.

My guide for the day was Director of Operations,

Bruce Goetz,

who showed me the amazing features of this airport.

Did you know that DIA has six runways,

each dedicated either to take offs or landings?

And these babies are huge.

In fact, DIA has the longest commercial runway

in North America at sixteen thousand feet long.

Now I know a lot of you have wondered,

'Hey, why is this airport so far from downtown?'

Well, the forefathers who envisioned DIA

had long-term growth in mind.

Currently, the airport sits on roughly

53 square miles of land.

That's enough room to build six more runways

without purchasing another acre of land.

Most airports located closer to cities

have land restrictions and struggled to build

even one runway.

So it won't be long until DIA jumps

to the fourth busiest airport on the continent.

Next, Bruce and I headed up into the ramp tower,

which controls all the traffic in the ramp area.

What we're looking at out these windows

is literally all the movement of the aircraft:

to and from the gates, out to the taxiways,

all that kind of stuff.

And right now we're in a lull, as you call it.

- Little bit of a slow period right now

since it's between banks this early afternoon period.

And as you mentioned before,

the FAA tower wants to only control runways and taxiways.

And they want the rest of this area,

in the center of the airport, around the concourses.

They don't want to manage that.

So that's left up to our controllers

in the United controllers to manage

all the movement of aircraft coming into

and out of the gate area.

The controllers up here have a lot of neat tools

to manage things safely.

Up above is our Aerobond system.

And that's a real-time display

of arriving and departing aircraft.

- So this is, I mean, literally real-time.

- One second updates.

So as that 757 is making the turn up there,

we'll immediately see them making the turn.

- So when we were boogieing around out there

in your super awesome ops truck,

we would have shown up on this.

- That's correct.

And I don't see another vehicle,

but our vehicle would have set ops five,

cause it has a transponder in it,

that's broadcasting our signal, which is ops five.

That's the whole goal of being out here is just safety.

Knowing where everybody is in relationship to everyone else.

- It also keeps you from going out there and taking a nap.

- I suppose we could see if you parked in one place

for a long time.

We do operate this facility 24 hours a day,

seven days a week.

There's always somebody up here.

And so they're a great dedicated group of people

that really know their job well

and making sure this airport

is running at maximum efficiency

and the passenger is everything.

And the reality is yes, there are gonna be hiccups.

There's gonna be hiccups here

the same way there are in Atlanta or Chicago O'Hare

but there's a lot of folks behind the scenes,

making sure that that delay, if it's there,

is really minimized.

- [Matthew] Not only is the ramp tower

helping you make your flight on time,

but so is a snow removal team.

DIA is famous for having

one of the largest snow removal teams in the world.

Let's head over to the field maintenance center

to see how these guys operate.

Whoa, that is an amazing plow.

What's even more amazing, this guy, Rich Brannan.

He's the AD of Field Maintenance for DIA.

How cool is that job?

So Rich, you guys are like a tiny little,

not even tiny, you're like public works.

- Right, yeah, we are. - Just for DIA.

Tell me what you guys do out here.

- So we are. We are a big department.

We're about 150 strong.

We pretty much do all the preventative maintenance

here at DIA.

We have basically two seasons, summer and winter.

Summer we do, basic maintenance.

We do paving. We do some concrete repair.

We do some repairs on the runways and taxiways.

We do erosion fence repair.

We do mowing, we have 53 square miles we basically maintain.

- Whoa, seriously 53 square miles?

- 53 square miles.

And we're--

- You guys don't use handheld mowers

- No only if you're on the bad list or something,

( both laughs)

But no, lots of tractors, lots of mowers,

tons of equipment.

We're 365 days a year.

So we're here all the time.

And then we transitioned to the snow, which is today.

And we have over almost 200 pieces of equipment

just in snow alone.

And yeah, we take care of the airfield.

So runways and taxiways.

- So speaking of snow removal, DIA has a 16,000 foot runway,

which is literally the longest runway in North America.

How do you plow that

and not just back up planes for hours and hours?

- Right, so with the 200 pieces of snow equipment we have,

we divide the airfield in half.

So we have an East side and a West side runway team.

That runway in particular is on the West side.

So we have approximately 22 pieces of equipment

that clear that runway alone.

So we're able to clear that runway

anywhere between 12 to 15 minutes.

And we have certain formations that we do that in,

depending on the snow and the wind.

So we'll go down the runway in a certain way

and it's one pass and the runway is clear.

- If I worked here, I would constantly be in trouble.

And I would be that kind of broom.

(soft upbeat music)

Rich took me inside their storage area

to see their whole equipment collection.

And it was nothing short of impressive.

With over 200 pieces of equipment,

you can be assured that any snow falling on DIA

is efficiently dealt with.

Back outside, Rich had one more huge piece of equipment

to show me.

This is not small.

- No (laughs).

- So, I mean, not only do you have this plow,

you've got like a whole broom thing going on down there.

What is this?

- So in addition with the Bo Shaun that we were at earlier,

we have blowers,

we have runway brooms, we use loaders, box plows,

and then we have these, these are the MBs.

So we have 26 of these.

They are 72 foot piece of equipment.

They have a 24 foot plow,

a little over six and a half feet tall.

Obviously you can stand underneath it.

With the 22 foot broom.

And these are one of our hardest working pieces of equipment

that we use.

These are the ones that we use to clear the runways,

and they're huge.

- So why a broom versus a plow or why a combo?

- So unlike removing snow on a street,

the runways have to be cleaned completely to the pavement.

So you can't have any residual on the actual taxiways

or the runways for airplane to kind of land and take off

and transport around in the air force.

- Okay, that makes sense.

- Yeah, so the plow actually takes off the grunt of the snow

and then the broom just basically brooms off the residual

that's left that the plow leaves and cleans it completely.

- You're literally getting right down to the very concrete.

- Right to the pavement

Yep, and then we treat it with sand or chemical or whatever.

- So this thing is longer than a semi-truck.

How much training goes into that?

I mean, you don't want just throw me in this thing,

'cause it would be a disaster.

- So you have to have a CDL.

I mean, that's a class B or class A.

Most of our drivers have class A's.

We have a robust training program here.

We have a separate division that actually does the training.

Our guys are trainers.

We have a lot of experience here,

a very diverse group that knows what they're doing

and we train each other and we go through a program.

It's almost all year round.

- I was about to say, that's gonna be all year round.

- Yeah.

- Even with all that training and all the equipment,

has there ever been a time that the snow

just got the best of you?

- Yeah. Unfortunately we have.

We've had a few storms where

the wind actually becomes an issue.

It's more visibility than is the snow depth

that we have to fight.

We're able to clear the snow.

We have the equipment to do that,

but 50 mile an hour winds and plus

tend to take the visibility away.

And when it becomes unsafe,

then we kind of have to pull off.

So we did.

2015, we had a about seven hour closure due to the winds,

due to the visibility and it just wasn't safe to be out.

- [Matthew] I remember that storm. That was a bear.

- But we got back in it.

- Yeah, there's not really any kind of windbreak out here,

is there?

- No. Not at all.

None at all.

- Say I'm sitting on my plane and I'm waiting to take off

and the snow is falling and I'm getting a little bit angry.

What can you say to me,

that's going to calm me down just to, like,

'Look, I'm doing my job.

I'm doing it as quickly as I can.'

You know, what do you want people who are

in the planes to know?

- So, our people, we're a humble group.

We work hard.

We don't take anything for granted.

We're out here for the safety of the public.

We know that.

We care about the public. It's what we do.

So their families and they make major sacrifices

to be out here.

We're out here all the time,

making sure that the airfield is cleaned for the passengers

and making sure that everything is safe for them.

- That's awesome. - Absolutely.

- Since snow is in the forecast,

I let these guys to their work

and headed back to the Great Hall

Here, I met up with Chief Financial Officer,

Gisela Shanahan to talk about the impact DIA has on Denver

and what's in store for the future.

So let's see, I think it was 2017.

You guys had over 61 million passengers through DIN.

- 61.4. It was a record breaking year.

We're on track for another record breaking year.

And we think we'll be at 64 million plus

by the time we end December.

- That's amazing. - It is.

What kind of economic impact does that have on

the Denver area?

- This is the single largest economic driver

in our region, as one entity.

The last study that was done to look at that was in 2013.

At that point we were generating 26 billion annually.

- That's with a B. - With a B.

So that number, as you can imagine is much larger.

The next study will be out within a year.

But we impact the entire region, whether it's--

- When you say region, you mean going up to Shayan?

- That's going into Wyoming, Kansas, so yes.

We are a regional airport.

We serve a multi-state region.

- That's amazing.

So what is your favorite part about this job?

- My favorite part is every day is different.

This is such a dynamic industry.

When you wake up in the morning, guaranteed,

your day will end very different than what you began

because there's globally factors can influence

what happens here, nationally, regionally,

here in city and county of Denver.

And that there are so many factors that drive what happens

at an airport any given day.

And for those of us who like that type of challenge,

this is really an exciting place to be.

- You guys are making some huge changes here.

Can you give us a little bit of an idea

of what's going on there?

- Yeah, so when this airport opened its doors in 1995,

newest commercial airport in the U.S.

as a large airport, right.

At that point in time, we were designed for about

50 million annual passengers.

Technology has changed, how we move passengers

through a check-in process has changed.

That's allowed us to continue to get

north of 60 million in this facility,

but we're preparing for the future right now.

And the growth continues here in this region.

So we need to be able to serve

more than 80 million annual passengers out of this facility.

So what you see--

- 80 million. - 80 million.

And more than that out of just this one facility.

So what we're doing, as you can see the construction,

is we're preparing this facility to more efficiently

process passengers through,

expanding our security checkpoints.

We're adding 30% capacity in the gates

to make sure more aircraft can come and go

and deliver those passengers.

- Alright, so since there're going to be a lot of people

who are probably either have been here

or will go through DEN,

what would you want a typical passenger to kind of know

about day-to-day operations?

- I think what people don't know about an airport is that

it is literally a city in and of itself.

- Yeah, no kidding. - So everything you need

to be able to take care of a passenger is all located here.

So 35,000 people work at the airport

in one capacity or another,

along with hundreds of businesses.

So whether that's an airline that most people think of,

or the airport itself, all the food and beverage services,

the retail, the rental cars,

all of that together creates that entire city

that works together like a well-tuned machine

to get everyone through and out on their way.

And our job is to make that journey,

that you take as a passenger,

as pleasant and seamless as possible.

- After talking with Gisela, she wished me luck

as I headed down into the depths of DIA.

You don't know what I'm talking about.

The tunnel.

Alright, we're where everybody wants to be.

We're in the tunnels underneath DIA.

This is where all the weird stuff goes on supposedly,

but not really.

This is just where all the baggage comes.

We're actually at baggage claim 17, we're underneath it.

So everybody's baggage just comes right through here.

It goes onto that conveyor belt.

You grab it, you go on your way, no big deal.

But for some reason people believe

there are all sorts of weird things going on down here.

I don't personally believe it, but it's...

I knew it. I knew it.

I knew it. I knew it.

Disclaimer, that was not a real lizard man.

As you can tell the employees here have

a great sense of humor.

In fact, there are over a thousand people that work

in the baggage tunnels every day.

And where exactly are these tunnels, you're wondering?

They actually run parallel to the train system

that transports passengers to and from the Concourses.

After some time exploring the labyrinth of tunnels,

I was ready to get back up to the surface.

You never know what you'll run into down here.

If you're a frequent flyer, then you know this airport.

It's the fifth busiest airport in the country.

And even has room to grow.

From driving on the airfield with Bruce

to touring the amazing selection of snow removal equipment

with Rich,

and even going underground to explore

the labyrinth of baggage tunnels.

We've taken you Behind the Wings

of Denver International Airport.

(soft upbeat music)

(clears throat)

Yeah, let's get that out of the way.

I've been wanting to do that all morning.

You see the rest of the museum.

Man, I gotta go find lizard men.

Have a great day. Be safe. Watch out.

- Alright. Thank you.

(Matthew groans)

Way to go, Emily Downer.

- Or this way? (laughs)

- I do that a lot.