Tag Archives: Boeing

Boeing 2707 Mockup

An online discussion I was involved in recently revolved around supersonic transports. While the TU-144 and Concorde were the main focus, the Boeing 2707 also came up. I had seen the front fuselage mockup of this when it was at the Hiller Museum in San Carlos. I realized I didn’t have any good photos of it and was a touch annoyed. Looking up the story of the mockup, I found it was now at the Museum of Flight Restoration Facility at Paine Field.

I hadn’t visited the facility since moving up here so figured a visit was in order. The mockup is easily accessible in the main part of the hangar. However, it is rather big and so only fits in with the nose section removed. I had a chat with the docent and he advised that it was unlikely to be moved to the main museum building given the amount of space it takes up. I assume it will stay where it is for the foreseeable future. The rest of the mockup was destroyed long ago so it is great that this piece has survived as a relic of a long gone program.

A DHL Delivery But to Them Rather Than By Them

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A lot of freighters come out of Everett these days. All 747s are now freighters as are the 767s. The 777 passenger variants are a regular feature but there is quite a demand for 777Fs too. I saw one go to DHL not long ago. They have some aircraft already in service but they are in a hybrid scheme. This was the first one to be delivered in the full DHL yellow colors. It taxied out and went to the other end of the field for a northerly departure which meant we got a good view of it airborne. The short delivery flight across the US meant it was rather light so it got airborne quickly and was a long way up by the time it got to us again!

Lots of Max Jets in Storage

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The grounding of the 737 Max fleet has resulted in plenty of parked jets. I have shown them at Paine Field but Boeing Field seems to be a big storage location. The employee parking lot has been turned into a 737 parking lot. I have seen jets over there before either awaiting engines or from customers that can’t pay but nothing on this scale.

I took a trip to South Park so I could walk across the bridge and get a good view down into the storage area. I made a rough count and think there were probably over fifty jets stored there. While Boeing cut the production rate after the grounding, they only took it down to 42 a month so jets are still coming out at a prodigious rate. This area is full so, aside from Paine Field and Renton, I believe they are flying them to other storage locations.

Fatigue 777X in the Test Frame

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Having seen the fatigue test 777X emerged from the production hangars (as I covered in this post), I assumed it had moved to the test area. I once made a drive around the back of the factory at Everett to see some of the discarded airframe structures that they have stored once they are finished with. I wrote about that in this post. The fatigue test area is in the same place so I thought a drive around was a good idea. Sure enough, the 777X was in the fatigue test rig. I guess it will be there for quite a while as they push and pull it to simulate many cycles of loading and see whether the structure has any long term issues to be addressed.

Fatigue Test 777X Emerges

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The first two flight test 777X airframes have been on the flight line. However, something different was sitting outside the production hangars at Everett. It was a 777X but it was missing a few more cosmetic parts. This was the fatigue test aircraft. It was being readied for movement around to the area of the plant where they undertake the fatigue testing. This will probably be the last time you get to see it like this. Once testing is done, I suspect it will rapidly end up in pieces for further analysis.

Vietnam Memorial B-52G Is Complete

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The Vietnam Veterans Memorial has been under construction for a while including the restoration of the B-52G, Midnight Express that spent many years outside at Paine Field. The opening ceremony took place over the Memorial Day weekend and I went along to check it out. I wrote an article for GAR about the ceremony and, if you want to read that, you can see it here.

The article includes most of the good images from the event so I won’t duplicate it all here but instead I shall just post a couple of shots that summarize what happened.

Light is Getting Good at YVR

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Arrivals at Vancouver are often on a westerly heading and on the north runway. This is not ideal for photography at touchdown except in the height of summer. Then the light comes around to the north side quite nicely. I wasn’t in Vancouver at the peak time but I did have a visit when the sun had started to get to a good spot. I met up with my buddy Mark for a little evening shooting.

Unfortunately, not everything I wanted came to the runway. The glide slope was apparently unserviceable so some airlines chose to go to the south runway. However, enough came to the north to be worthwhile. The later it got, the better the light became. Some interesting overseas arrivals come in late enough to take advantage of this plus the regular local traffic to provide some nice opportunities. It was a nice evening of shooting and meant the traffic was far easier by the time I got on the road home.

Two Special American 737s – At Last

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American Airlines has painted a number of its jets in liveries of the airlines that went into it over the years. It happens that, as I write this on a plane, I just saw an A320 in American West colors as we taxied out. They painted up three 737s in special schemes and I had a poor record of seeing them. Two of these, the TWA scheme and the Reno Air scheme, both showed up at DFW while I was there waiting for a flight home. The TWA scheme landed just after I got there so I saw it while riding the inter-terminal shuttle. I then had it taxi out past me a little while later. Sadly it took off from the other side of the field. The Reno jet followed later and it did take off from our side so I felt like I had finally checked out something that had evaded me for too long.

Never Heard of Them But Now They’re In the News

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Until recently I had never heard of Miami Air International. Then I photographed this rather unpleasant yellow 737-800 that landed at Boeing Field. Only FlightAware (and a squint at the text on the fuselage) let me know who operated the jet. The Scimitar winglets hint at the previous owner since they clearly didn’t get repainted! A couple of days after this, another of their jets went off a runway in Florida and ended up in a river. Now I know who they are!

A C-17 at Boeing Field?

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Boeing Field does occasionally get military transient traffic at weekend but recently it has had some heavies show up. I saw that a C-5 had been passing through which would have been really cool to see. I was heading down that way not long ago when I saw a KC-46 depart towards me as I drove shortly followed by a C-17. I was a bit disappointed to have missed both of them. I did not anticipate that the C-17 would return.

However, a while later, I heard something call up on final but it wasn’t showing up on FlightRadar24. I took a guess it might be military and moved to the arrival end and, sure enough, the C-17 was coming down the approach at a leisurely pace. It was a Travis jet. I was told that McChord is being resurfaced so that might explain why this jet ended up at Boeing Field rather than down there.