Boeing’s 787 jetliner makes first test flight
SEATTLE -- The crowd of workers and dignitaries lining Paine Field today held their breath as the Boeing 787 Dreamliner roared down the runway, lifted its nose into the air and then flew north with two chase planes trailing along the horizon and then into a bank of clouds.
For the first time, a passenger jetliner with a body and wings made of super-hardened plastics took wing, a milestone that promises to usher in a new era in aviation.
The plane was scheduled to circle over the Puget Sound for four or so hours, as Michael Carriker and co-pilot Randall Neville test whether the 787’s state-of-the-art wing and electronics systems perform as designed. Rainy weather, however, became a factor, and Boeing executives said they planned to pare flight time to about three hours.
The airplane’s maiden voyage, like all first flights, was the moment of truth for Boeing’s executives and engineers who conceived the aircraft and then guided it through the nightmare of production problems that delayed it by more than two years.
“It is a milestone because it is the fruition of all the simulations, the modeling and the practical ground testing,” said John Strickland, a London-based air transport consultant.
“I think there’s going to be a bigger sigh of relief than usual,” Strickland had predicted last week. “It also gives them another positive publicity moment after all the stalls.”
The large use of composites employed by Chicago-based Boeing Co. in the 787 and by Airbus SAS in the Airbus A350-XWB, due to hit the market four years from now, could provide the largest leap in the experience of flying since jets replaced propeller-driven aircraft on long flights during the 1960s and 1970s.
The new planes are designed to be roomier, with oversized windows. Replacing metal with stronger and more flexible composites will enable the oxygen piped through the planes to be a richer mix, more humid and closer to the air at sea level.
The planes, coming as barriers to overseas air travel tumble, will also change how airlines operate.
They’ll no longer have to concentrate long-range flying on hubs or high-traffic routes, where there’s sufficient demand for flying to fill Boeing 747 jumbos seating upwards of 300 people. The mid-sized 787 is designed to fly as far or even farther than those jets, enabling carriers to economically link smaller cities.
“The first flight of the 787 is a real achievement and it underscores the continual advancements in commercial aircraft that come about because of healthy competition,” Clay McConnel, vice-president of Airbus said in a statement saluting Boeing.
But still to be determined is whether this model, the Boeing 787-8, is the game-changer or whether that role will be fulfilled by planes still to come, like its larger cousin, the 787-9.
The 787 certainly looks sleek, with its scalloped engines and delicate wings that mirror a hawk’s silhouette. But the first models to roll out of Boeing’s Everett, Wash., assembly line aren’t quite the clean concept sketched out by Boeing designers in 2003.
Their composite frames have been studded with titanium as Boeing learned by trial and error that aircraft needed to be reinforced. That increased use of metal raises questions about whether Boeing will be able to deliver early aircraft to the weight and cost savings it promised.
“The 787-8 appears to have evolved from a once elegant composite design to one saddled with carbuncles of heavy titanium added throughout for strengthening,” wrote Heidi Wood, aerospace analyst with Morgan Stanley in an Oct. 20 research report.
She predicts that the first 787, due to be delivered to launch customer All Nippon Airways by the end of 2010, could be delayed until the following spring as Boeing works out the weight issues.
One solution to the 787’s weight gain, she said, may be for Boeing to convince customers to shift orders to the larger 787-9, where it will be easier for Boeing engineers to shed weight from the plane’s design. The problem: about three-quarters of the 840 orders placed for the 787 are for the smaller plane.
“To the casual observer, experience says despite the big challenges, [Boeing] can get it done as they have before,” Wood said. “We concur that the 787 will get righted, but not likely on schedule.”
Boeing executives say they think they can stick to their latest schedule and point to a supply-chain that is starting to work in synch, important given that about 80 percent of the plane’s manufacturing is outsourced to third-party contractors.
As evidence, at least four 787s were parked within site of onlookers at Paine Field Tuesday. The second 787 is due to fly later this month. Inside, the giant factory, workers are beginning to join together the 11th Dreamliner, wrote aerospace analyst Howard Rubel in a Dec. 14 research report.
After two years of missteps and freakish mishaps, the 787 appeared headed for another delay to its first flight Tuesday. Pilots need at least five miles of unfettered visibility to take an experimental plane like the Dreamliner into the sky for the first time and the forecast called for rain.
But as 16,000 onlookers gathered to catch a glimpse of history, the clouds lightened. At 9:50 a.m. PST, the Dreamliner’s engines started, a few minutes later it pulled away from a parking space that placed it next to a 787 painted in the colors of launch customer All Nippon Airways
Helicopters gathered overhead, including one loaded with IMAX camera equipment, part of a movie that will document that aircraft’s birth.
The 787 glided to the south end of the airport at a stately pace. And then as pilot Carriker ran through pre-flight maneuvers, two chase planes flew over the field in tight formation and then circled back.
They provided an honor guard to the plane as it roared into action, with one plane barely missing the 787’s nose as it lifted into the air. Then the three aircraft drifted into the distance.
Moments later it began to rain, a sign that the 787’s string of bad luck had ended - at least for this day.
