Recently in Boeing 787 First Delivery Category

EVERETT -- All Nippon Flight 9397 rotated off of runway 16R at 7:17 AM PT. No Boeing test pilots were at the controls, no FAA observers on the flight deck, just the airline's personnel, handling the jet with the white-glove treatment. The event was captured from a myriad of angles, just as the first flight of the 787 was in December 2009. 

The aircraft, currently enroute to Haneda Airport will cross the international dateline and land in Tokyo around 8:30 AM local time on Wednesday, about 1:30 ET. Boeing and ANA will broadcast the arrival live on UStream. 

JA801A, Airplane Eight, was first today and Airplane 24, JA802A, will follow in its footsteps in mid-October, the airline said this morning. That will provide ANA two 787s before the aircraft formally enters scheduled revenue service on November 1. Air India, receiving Airplane 35, will be the first customer with GEnx engines and is expected to take delivery before the end of the year. Most likely candidates for delivery in 2011 include Airplane 24, Seven, Nine, 40, 41, 31 and 35, putting Boeing's goal at eight on the year.

My complete photoset from the flyaway is below the fold.

EVERETT -- Airplane Eight, as it was once known, now JA801A, is spending its final night here in Washington before departing at 6:35 AM PT from Paine Field on early Tuesday morning. The photo, which was actually taken last night (when it wasn't raining), captures a lot of Boeing history in the viewfinder. The 747, the aircraft that spawned the Everett factory's three original bays in the late 1960s is seen in its -8 freighter variant readying for a departure from the final assembly line.

Photo Credit Flickr User simpilot459

On an early summer's night in Everett on exactly the same spot - with weather warmer and far dryer than today - Boeing employees who worked to assemble, and later disassemble and reassemble, Dreamliner One, walked the first 787 out of the factory. 

It was just after midnight on June 26, 2007, and the first roll of the wheels out of Building 40-26 was met with spontaneous applause during the transition from second to third shift. Those on the factory floor would walk behind her wingtips as far as they could go before being stopped at the bridge over Route 526 to the paint hangar.

That moment would be captured by photographer Charles Conklin, and represented the 787's official, unofficial debut. Many more eyes would be watching on July 8, 2007. 

Conklin's photographs would lead this page and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer the following day. The 787 story, and later its extended saga, solidified into a single idea that night, not disparate group of systems and structures from Boeing and its global partners, but it had - on that day - become an aircraft that would draw the world's attention to a single place: This factory.

Those of us who watched from the outside got to march along the journey in a small way, reporting its milestones and missteps. The biography of the Dreamliner is a snapshot in time of a transforming company and one whose birth comes amidst the backdrop of changing country, a changing world and its changing economy. At almost every turn, this aircraft and its story are linked in that change. 

The next chapter in the 787 story is just as important, if not moreso, than the one just closed. Boeing must make good on its leap which it believes is the backbone for the next three decades. Making the 787 as good for Boeing as Boeing believes the 787 is for airlines is the central question of the airframer's long-term health.

The 787's necessity to connect the world's growing aerotropoli is at the heart of this shifting center of gravity; away from the mature economies in the US and Europe and toward those in Brazil, Russia, India and China, each with industries, and ambitions, to challenge Boeing and Airbus on the world's stage. 

For its newly developed - and hard-earned - technological edge, Boeing has swum to the next island from its coming competitors. A swim that changed lives, both personal and professional, with each contributor different than when the journey first began. 

The march for those who walked today with the 787 was stopped once again, except this time it is to see the aircraft off to its new home. They will remain here, to return to the factory and to the Towers to begin once again the march into Boeing's next chapter.

EVERETT -- I've been following the 787 for almost five years now and surprises came at every turn, yesterday was no different.

Boeing invited the media to come on-board Airplane 24 (JA802A) yesterday, the second 787 for delivery to All Nippon Airways, and we went hands-on - or in this case "hands-off" - with one of the Dreamliner's more novel features. ANA, the launch customer since 2004, and now proud 787 owner, selected an automatically lowering toilet seat option for its lavatories. 

"This would solve so many fights at home," joked (we assumed) Flightglobal Americas Editor, Stephen Trimble.

The hands-free flush sensor is a standard feature for the new jet, which will be handed over to its first customer in an official ceremony Monday morning. 

This is what I call nose-to-tail innovation.

EVERETT -- With Saturday's first flight of Airplane 24, ZA103, registered JA802A, Rolls-Royce marked an important milestone, the first flight of the Package B Trent 1000 engine on a production aircraft, confirms program vice president and general manager Scott Fancher.

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UPDATE: Boeing and Rolls-Royce clarified earlier inaccurate remarks that said the Package B engines had flown on Airplane 24. That is, in fact, not the case and it looks like the Package B engines won't deliver until November or December ahead of the January start for ANA's long-haul international service to Frankfurt.

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Certification of the Package B engine, expected soon, incorporates a revised six-stage low pressure turbine (LPT) design, high-aspect-ratio blades, relocation of the intermediate-pressure (IP) compressor bleed offtake ports and a fan outlet guide vanes with improved aerodynamics. The updated engine will bring specific fuel consumption to within 1% of the original specification.

ANA and Boeing declined to comment on the delivery timing of the second 787 to ANA, though several program sources point a handover in the second half of October. 

At June's Paris Air Show, Rolls-Royce expected ANA's fifth 787 to be powered by the Package B engine and would inaugurate international long-haul service, though ANA senior vice president Satoru Fujiki said the second aircraft will delivered in its short to medium-haul configuration.

EVERETT -- The money is in the bank, the aircraft is delivered. All Nippon Airways has taken contractual delivery of its first 787. One down, eight hundred and twenty to go.

SEATTLE -- With the official delivery transaction between Boeing and 787 launch customer All Nippon Airways a day away, the first aircraft to be handed over to the Japanese carrier has received its Certificate of Airworthiness, the company confirms.