The first Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental after landing at Boeing Field after her first flight.
Some media outlets are reporting that the FAA partial shutdown could affect the certification of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, the 747-8 Freighter and 747-8 Intercontinental. According to Boeing, as of now, the partial shut down will not affect the certification of the aircraft, but could affect airports looking to be certified to operate the new 747-8.
“The FAA says airplane certification activities will continue– so we don’t expect any impact there,” Boeing spokesperson Doug Alder Jr explained to AirlineReporter.com. “As for airport certification, if furloughed FAA personnel don’t return to work in time to finish the remaining airport approvals for the 747-8, customers wouldn’t be able to fly the airplane into certain airports until that work is complete (SFO, Newark, O’Hare and Houston are the major ones).”
This is just another reason to be angry at the partial FAA shutdown.
787 Chief Pilot Mike Carriker looks out at the 747-8 Intercontinental. Click for larger. Photo by Boeing.
Randy Tinseth, vice president of marketing for Boeing Commercial Airplanes, recently posted this photo on his blog to help promote which Boeing aircraft will be showing up at the Paris Air Show later this month. Tinseth announced that the 747-8 Intercontinental, the 747-8 Freighter, the first 787 flight-test airplane ZA001, an Air Berlin 737-700 with the new Boeing Sky Interior, and a Qatar Airways Boeing 777-200LR will be present at the air show.
The second Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental (named RC021) took to the skies on April 26th and Boeing has just release their official video.
This 747-8I is special, since it will be the first Intercontinental to actually enter passenger service and will be delivered to Lufthansa Airlines. The first (RC001), which first took off on March 20th, will be going to a private buyer.
As reported earlier, even though this Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental will be going to Lufthansa, it does not have the full livery since the aircraft is going through flight testing. However, I have heard rumors that a full liveried Lufthansa Boeing 747-8I might be coming out of the paint hangar sometime this summer.
The new Boeing 747-8F is one majestic aircraft. Along with all the majesticness (yes I just made that a word) comes a lot of weight. The 747-8F can take off weighing nearly one million pounds and for the flight tests, Boeing needs to make sure the aircraft can successfully complete an aborted take off, fully loaded.
The Ultimate Rejected Takeoff (yes that is official terminology) is not made easy. First they loaded up the aircraft to about 975,000 pounds. Then they made sure the brakes were as worn as possible — not something that would happen during normal maintenance.
Once the aircraft got above 200mph, the Boeing test pilot, Captain Kirk Vining, slammed on the brakes. During a normal aborted take off, the pilot would also use thrust reversers, but not for this test. All that energy (and it is a lot) went directly to the brakes.
The 747-8F was able to stop about 700 feet sooner than Boeing was expecting. However, stopping is just half the battle. As you can see in the video, once the aircraft is stopped, the brakes were glowing red. Even though a fire crew was on the scene, they let the brakes sit for five minutes to see how the 747-8F would react.
This video shows a worst case scenario. Even if you have experienced a rejected take off as a passenger, it most likely wasn’t this violent. This just goes to show that aircraft can handle a lot and are extremely safe.
For more information and a second video, check out Boeing’s website.
The Boeing 787 Dreamliner (ZA001) and Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental (RC020) flying side-by-side. Photo by Boeing. Click for much larger.
If a picture is worth a 1000 words, this is worth probably around a million. This is the eye candy of eye candy for airline nerds, so please enjoy the 747-8 Intercontinental (RC001) and the 787 Dreamliner (ZA001) flying next to each other during flight tests. The photo was taken April 16 by flight test photographer Leo Dejillas over Washington state. Yea, he has a rough job huh? Click the photo for a larger version.
UPDATE: Boeing has a great link to make this image your desktop background. It is now mine!
