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).
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.