ATC (it's busy) can be challenging at SFO. As it is an older airport and had to fill in part of the bay, not too likely they will get proper spacing of the runways for true dual runway operation. You notice in the film that ATC keeps slowing them down to maintain position behind the 757... This can be an issue if one plane such as a 747 is much heavier than another or there is a natural approach/landing speed differential. Flying the freighters, they almost always land at max weight unlike the pax birds, and have much higher approach speeds. Usuall in a case like that a warning to approach of your min speed on final (ie: 160 knots) help their planning. They were able to slow to less than 140 knots, a heavily loaded aircraft would not be able to do that. (pax don't weigh n'utt'n).
Yes things must be on the CVR: The most important is often "Checklist Complete". Our policy is to only pull the CVR circuit breaker if there is an accident or incident so as to preserve the CVR recording. This stops the tape from recording over itself.
You probably can't see it in the film, but on the Nav Display, in the upper left corner is the wind vector arrow, which shows the instantaneous wind direction and velocity at out location while we are flying. Very valuable!
Cheers: T.
