After false starts — Boeing’s flight test campaign for the 787 is now underway, ahead of the first delivery of the Dreamliner later this year. TIM ROBINSON profiles the testing activity for the 787 and speaks to Randy Tinseth, vice president marketing, Boeing Commerical Airplanes, on the programme’s future.
This is an excerpt from an article published in Aerospace International: March 2010On 15 December 2009 on a cold and misty Seattle morning, the prototype Boeing 787 Dreamliner, the first all new airliner of the 21st century made its maiden flight, watched by Boeing employees, the world’s media and also by thousands around the globe logged in online through the Internet. The three-hour flight from the 787 factory at Everett’s Paine Field saw the two pilots, chief test pilot Mike Carriker and engineering test pilot Randy Neville thread ZA001 round foggy weather to finally land at the flight test centre at Boeing Field. With the visibility closing in and a requirement for safety reasons to take off to the north, (where it is more sparsely populated) it had been touch and go on the day but, luckily, a weather window appeared and history was made.
