I adore behind-the-scenes tours. I get there's a lot of work that goes into making it happen, but when you drop into a place where people work, you'll learn so much about real life problems that never make it to the Internet.
The greatest tour I ever had was at the Smokejumper base in remote WA. At any time when they're open, you're allowed to drop in for a tour and whoever is there that day is obliged to give you one. Even in the height of fire season.
We got to see them pack parachutes, repair gear, coordinate parcel drops - everything. Our guide was a 3 year jumper veteran on summer break from his masters degree in linguistics. It was incredible.
Any org that's proud of what they do should aspire to have public tours.
I highly recommend the tour of the Itaipu Binacional hydroelectric dam in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil (well, it's also in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, but the tour starts from the Brazilian side).
https://turismoitaipu.com.br/en/
Get the "special tour" which takes you inside the dam. An absolutely incredible spot and incredible achievement. They will take you into a room with a turbine shaft that's mechanically transmitting 700 MW of power.
Sounds incredible. I am going to bookmark this to do if I take a trip to Brazil.
Yes, field trips were always my favorite part of school. The "How its Made" show scratches a similar itch.
I've noodled with the idea of starting a "fieldtrips for grownups" group but I feel like a wastewater treatment plant is more likely to open their doors for a group of third graders than a group of thirty somethings.
That’s probably true but I wouldn’t count it out. I think you’re more likely to get answers like “we do 10:00 on tuesdays” (timed for schools) than “no”
That is a great idea. Too often, we just grow up getting used to the idea that things are just made somewhere in a "black box" and never take the time to investigate. We could probably get into more places than we realize.
> ... more likely to open their doors for a group of ...
Probably true. Usually. Just keep your eyes on local news, and wait 'till the Sewer Dept. is facing budget cuts, or needs a rate increase to pay for long-delayed repairs, or is trying to get a millage passed.
I highly recommend a free Amazon warehouse tour. You really get to see how the items you order gets picked and packaged.
I've heard about that. I plan to do that sometime.
Remember, most fire stations will give you a tour, let you sit in the truck, etc, if you just pop in. They love to show off.
Source: My father was a 35 year veteran of the fire department in a large city.
Great tip. I would never think to ask. Now I want to go to one!
I love that. I want to take more tours like this. One thing I found very interesting about it was to be immersed in a company culture. It's kind of like being a fish in water. You might not notice your own culture around you, but going into one that is very distinctive, you can observe it.
On a visit to Hiroshima, Japan, I went to the Mazda HQ for a factory tour. They took the group on a shuttle bus through their massive city-like complex and then we got to walk through one of the assembly-line buildings. Real fascinating experience.
A few years ago, I got a tour of Starbucks headquarters from a friend. One thing I didn't expect: it's literally filled with rooms where people just taste coffee, all day, every day, to make sure it's what it's supposed to be.
It's crazy how even something which feels mediocre so much of the time - fast-food coffee, a budget airline - requires an enormous amount of human effort to pull off reliably.
(And yes, you can dislike Southwest as a corporation and still think things like flight attendant training and plane simulators are cool. Come on folks.)
Sometimes, large corporation values consistency above one-off excellence. It’s how they build their brand (the promise of consistency).
I won’t be surprised if the people in rooms tasting coffee is also looking for coffee that is too good for one-off but hard to be replicable in the various stores they have.
Consistency and predictability is considered extremely important for large franchise operations (or corporate-run chains). People want exactly the same sausage patty and egg croissant in St. John's Newfoundland as they can get in San Diego, California.
Quoting Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash:
The franchise and the virus work on the same principle: what thrives in one place will thrive in another. You just have to find a sufficiently virulent business plan, condense it into a three-ring binder ― its DNA ― xerox it, and embed it in the fertile lining of a well-traveled highway, preferably one with a left- turn lane. Then the growth will expand until it runs up against its property lines.
In olden times, you’d wander down to Mom’s Café for a bite to eat and a cup of joe, and you would feel right at home. It worked just fine if you never left your hometown. But if you went to the next town over, everyone would look up and stare at you when you came in the door, and the Blue Plate Special would be something you didn’t recognize. If you did enough traveling, you’d never feel at home anywhere.
But when a businessman from New Jersey goes to Dubuque, he knows he can walk into a McDonald’s and no one will stare at him. He can order without having to look at the menu, and the food will always taste the same. McDonald’s is Home, condensed into a three-ringed binder and xeroxed. “No surprises” is the motto of the franchise ghetto, its Good Housekeeping seal, subliminally blazoned on every sign and logo that make up the curves and grids of light that outline the Basin.
The people of America, who live in the world’s most surprising and terrible country, take comfort in that motto.
I would love to tour a coffee company (or a chocolate company). Two of my favorite things. :)
TIL that pilots can't have a full beard because oxygen masks can't make a seal. Guess that's where the pilot moustache stereotype comes from.
Good mask fit came up a lot during Covid. Moustaches can interfere too (depending on size, and mask shape)
Routing packets? Easy! Routing $100 million equipment with 200 souls on board? A bit more nerve racking. Airline operations is one of the most fun and complex problems on the planet. Thanks for sharing!
Very cool post. I don't fly much anymore, by choice. But I'm always impressed at the scale and complexity that it takes to operate an airline like Southwest. I appreciate you sharing. Sorry you didn't get to see the actual NOC!
It was a bit disappointing, but going into the tour, I had no idea what I would see, so it wasn't something I had any expectation about. Altogether though, I felt like I saw some very amazing stuff up close.
I was given a similar tour of Qantas's headquarters, including a walkthrough of their engine workshop and the chance to roam freely inside one of their A380s that was parked up for maintenance. I took heaps of photos, I suppose if this stuff is interesting to others I really should think about sharing them.
Sharing these raw and unedited while the topic is still relevant: https://share.icloud.com/photos/006C8RDrTbAiQFIr3T2xJdekQ
I would love to see it!
That would be welcomed!
// We later learned that sadly only 6% of Southwest pilots are women,
I am not sure that's a "sadly". I used to fly a lot and talk to flight crews. Aviation is a ton of crazy schedules and nights away from home (I assume this is well known)
From a family perspective it's bad enough if dads missing from the house for days at a time, much more catastrophic if mom's not around like that.
(A child's relationship with mom vs. dad is very different. Kids need their mom in a very different way that we can't just paper over)
Fair - how does that account for the predominantly female FA population?
I don't think FA is a great job for a mom but it's not as horrible as pilot. FAs can switch shifts between themselves and dial up or down their hours with relative ease. Pilots have a lot less of this flexibility.
forgive me if I am wrong, but this comment sounds like we are trying to build a narrative. I might be wrong. No offense.
Not sure the point. I was citing the article and sharing my reaction. What are you doing with the royal we?
The "sadly" comment in the article is also a narrative. No offense.
There appears to be a rope-like device on the emergency equipment training board (8th picture), with some bicone shapes.
Anyone know what that is?
Perhaps an escape rope for the pilots?
EDIT: Yup, here it is in action: https://www.jetphotos.com/photo/7389569
Yes, that looks like an escape rope for pilots.
https://www.aviation-gadgets.com/photo/virgin-australia-boei...
I am glad you found that. Someone asked our guide, and I missed the explanation!
Fantastic write up. It's mind blowing how much complexity there is to keep flights going day in and day out.
My guess is all airline NOCs operate 24/7 as flights happen around the clock. Also planes typically don't have much downtime as that loses money so everything has to be a continuous operation.
Cool looking at the pictures of the dashboards. It's nutty to think how much has to be tracked when doing airplane maintenance.
I’ve toured the Lucid Motors factory a few times, and man, it’s incredible. Sometimes we forget that the things we use every single day take massive amounts of space, people, and technology to build.
We software people are spoiled with our keyboards and Red Bull :p
Cool, I was on a contract last year for their cybersecurity division and implemented observability and AI for their cloud environments. They have a few different cafeterias at the HQ in the different buildings and the SWA store but I never got to see the sim and pilot training areas.
That sounds awesome. They actually told us during the tour that many employees never see the areas we went to. It was pretty exclusive. As for different break areas, I loved that they had so much memorabilia around. I feel like I saw so many different scenes in there. I think I would have gotten lost in there if I hadn't had a tour guide!
the worst was when I had to come to Dallas and go to HQ where we were at on the 4th floor of the main building, someone booked a meeting room in one of the other buildings and we had to walk across the walkway to it. I logged 3 mile walk to and back from just that meeting.
I'm envious of your full tour. You got a chance of a lifetime to see everything up close where most of us just get a glimpse if we are lucky.
SWA does some seriously complex stuff. Neat tour!
oh hey kati! we met at pycon in portland years ago, awesome to see you on the HN frontpage!
Oh awesome! If you see me again, let's catch up!
Being a "superfan" of a corporation is already kind of questionable, but especially so when its leadership has been steadily dismantling so many great customer-friendly things that distinguished them from the competition. I'm glad at least something like this has survived long enough for you to have a neat experience.
You could’ve just said, “I’m glad you enjoyed it!” or said nothing at all rather than lecturing her on your politics.
This is the internet; we don’t do “reasonable” here, apparently :p