With visitors in town, I took them to the Boeing factory tour at Everett.  I know this might seem like I was doing this for my own benefit but I think they were happy to go and it helped to be doing something indoors on a rainy day.  When we got there, we arrived in time to see a bunch of jets landing.  There was a stream of them coming in it seemed and I was surprised to see that there were 787-10s coming in.  The Dash 10 is not built at Everett.  They are only assembled in Charleston so they wouldn’t normally be at Everett.  Some Hainan 787-9s had also made the trip.

It turns out that they were evacuations from the impending hurricane.  South Carolina was in the path of a major hurricane, Florence, heading towards the southeast coast of the US.  Apparently, Boeing had decided to get the jets that were airworthy out of there to minimize the risk of damage.  I suspect they would move more if they could but this was the best that they could do.  The thing I found interesting was that they brought the jets all the way across the country and that there wasn’t somewhere closer that they could have as a refuge.  Perhaps it is easier logistically to manage but it is a long flight to make.