With weekend vacationers and commuters returning home, Friday is always a busy day at the airport. More passengers means more problems, keeping the Duty Managers on high alert. Today it's an air ambulance emergency, security breaches, illegal drugs and a shouting passenger facing a ban from the airline she's booked to fly on.

Sydney Airport is a city within a city, with thousands of crew keeping operations flowing. The work never slows, from changing a wind sock, painting a runway at midnight, repairing a stuck airbridge before the plane arrives, saving a maintenance worker from a stuck elevator, or putting out a potentially catastrophic fire that traps hundreds of passengers on a recently arrived flight.