Boeing 787 Dreamliner - Mark Wagner [101]
While surveying teams set out to prepare for the new East Coast facility’s ground-breaking ceremony later that month, the side-of-body team in Everett completed installation of the reinforcement on ZA001 on November 11. Without a pause, it then moved quickly to complete the same fittings at 34 stringer locations on the static test aircraft and ZA002. Some 19 days later, Boeing reran the design limit-load test—the true acid test for the structural reinforcement. Speaking later to Aviation Week & Space Technology, Fancher recalled there “was a sigh of relief” when it passed the test, but added that by then “to be honest, we were pretty confident.”
Flight-test instrumentation is installed into the fuel system of ZA001’s right wing main tank prior to the first fueling in early May 2009. ZA001 instrumentation was mainly concerned with measuring volume and capacity, while ZA002 was fitted with an oxygen analyzer and fiber-optic temperature sensor to monitor tank conditions. These would be a focus for certification, since the 787 was the first all-new U.S. air transport to require FAA-mandated fuel tank inerting systems from day one. Guy Norris
On December 10, Boeing completed the review and analysis of the static test. To the flight-test team, itching to take ZA001 into the sky, the report was seen as a mere technicality. Confident that this time it would really happen, the team had been busy rerunning a truncated version of the final gauntlet testing originally undertaken that summer.
Over December 11 and 12, Mike Carriker and 787 engineering test pilot Randy Neville took ZA001 out onto Paine Field’s main runway for a series of taxi tests that gradually reached higher speeds. Finally, by that Saturday afternoon, ZA001’s nose wheel lifted briefly off the runway as the crew pushed the blue and white aircraft to rotation speed at around 130 knots. A final flight readiness review was passed successfully, and finally, after more than two years of waiting, first flight beckoned.
TAKE OFF
Boeing announced the first flight window would open at 10 a.m. on December 15, bringing a stampede of journalists toward Seattle from around the world. But as the day drew closer, it seemed the weather gods would play another cruel trick on Boeing. Weather front after weather front crashed in on the Puget Sound from the Pacific; storm-force winds blew, and rain poured.
Hoping for a miracle, or at least a break in the weather, Boeing nonetheless carried on preparations, and by the morning of the planned flight, an estimated crowd of 12,000 had gathered in and around Paine Field. Huddled together for warmth against a penetrating icy breeze, onlookers scanned the skies in hope of seeing the cloud base lift for first flight. As the time for the flight test window opened and skies lightened, anticipation grew.
Pictured on the Paine Field ramp prior to its maiden flight, the first General Electric GEnx-1B–powered 787 was set for certification and entry into service early in 2011. Although the engine was held back by overall program delays, GE used the extra time to develop and test an improved low-pressure turbine section, which narrowed a fuel-consumption performance gap revealed during tests of the initial design. The first two aircraft, ZA005 (pictured) and ZA006, however, were powered by an interim Block 4 configuration that included other improvements, such as a more efficient oil-cooler design that saved 220 pounds per shipset. Mark Wagner
Inside ZA001, Carriker and Neville waited for word that conditions were creeping toward Boeing’s minimal horizontal and vertical visibility requirements for first flight, as well as a tailwind of 9 knots