I am not sure if anyone else happened to catch the three part series "City In The Sky" on PBS. Both my wife and I found it to be a very enlightening look into what it takes to keep the millions of people who are living in that airborne city we take for granted. It was broken down into three parts: Departure, Airborne and Arrival.
I have flown millions of miles and like most of us have taken for granted all of the interacting units that it takes to get us from point A to point B. They touched on everything from airport design, baggage tags, luggage handling, catering, the building of planes, air traffic control, protecting new planes from a lightning strikes, medical emergencies, pilot training, centralized monitoring of engines while they are in flight, scheduled tear downs of aircraft to check for stress cracks and so much more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7beaIjuTfU