Tag Archives: dreamliner

Qantas Celebrates Aborigine Art Again

Qantas has decorated previous aircraft with liveries that encompass aborigine art. Their Wunala Dreaming aircraft was well known around the world and, in an age when airline liveries tend to be rather bland, these colorful jets are a welcome change. They have taken a similar route with one of their new Boeing 787-9s and I saw it at Paine Field during test flying. It came in from the south and executed a go around from relatively low level.

Then they caught me out by heading north to turn and make an approach from the opposite direction. This required some rather swift repositioning by me. In fact, I got to the parking lot as they were on final approach and, rather than park, I just pulled to the side, ran up the bank, grabbed the shot and then got back in the car to park properly. It was tight but it worked out okay.

Korean Air Dreamliner on Test

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I had a couple of encounters with the same jet while it was on test. (It’s brake dust already showed up in this post.) This 787-9 is, by now, part of the Korean Air fleet. I saw it depart from Paine Field one evening in pleasant light. The low sun angle really brought out the shape of the underside of the wing in a way that normally you just don’t get to appreciate. It showed up a second time while I was out to get the farewell flight of the Delta 747 which I wrote about here. It came in at a similar time and the wet weather helped to make the pale blue color scheme pop a bit more.

Smoky Brake Dust on a New 787

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This Korean Air 787-9 Dreamliner is seen taking off one Saturday afternoon from Paine Field on a production flight test. It was lightly loaded so it was off the ground pretty rapidly and was already cleaning up the gear as it came toward me. The wheels are braked before the gear comes up to stop them spinning before they enter the bay. This can result in a burst of brake dust that blows clear in the slipstream and the shadow of the brake dust showed up clearly. As they continued the climb out, they actually lowered the gear again. I think this was to cool the brakes given they had done a high-speed taxi run prior to the takeoff.

It’s a Long Way to Bole

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There are plenty of widebody flights out of Paine Field. Since the flights are normally not very long compared to the capabilities of the aircraft, they tend to be light and get off the ground quickly. A delivery flight is a different proposition if it is for an airline based a long way away. Ethiopian was taking delivery of a 787. The flight was a direct one from Everett to Bole. Consequently, it was fueled up well. Still, it didn’t have much payload and I was surprised to see it get off the ground pretty quickly. They had a long flight ahead of them.

Thai Delivery

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Before the time changed, it was possible to get some evening departures from Everett in nice light after work. I saw that a delivery flight was scheduled for a Thai 787 and a Dreamlifter was due out shortly afterwards. I figured this was a good one to go for. The Thai delivery actually slipped a bit from its scheduled time and I was more than happy for it to do so as the light was getting better and better. By the time the jet started rolling, the light couldn’t have been nicer. It was also a heavy jet and rotated not far from me so I got a great angle on the takeoff and, as it climbed away, the purple in the livery seemed to glow.

Boeing 787-10 on Test

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I wrapped up some work in Seattle and was about to head back home when a quick check on FlightRadar24 showed me that the Boeing 787-10 test aircraft was en route back to Boeing Field. It would be rude to ignore that. The weather had been pretty crummy and there was plenty of heavy cloud in the area but it looked like it might brighten up a bit and, as the sun went down, there was a chance of it lighting up beneath the clouds. I sat in the car dealing with some emails and waiting for the arrival.

Sure enough, as the time approached, the sun did start to peep out from beneath the clouds. It was intermittent at first but it became more consistent as Boeing 01 Heavy called up on approach. Meanwhile, a nice black cloud was still lurking in the background. What a great combination that type of light makes. The plane glided down the approach, its trailing static cone hanging from the top of the fin and then it was down. A nice result.

The Less Subtle Bits of Dreamliner Design

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Airliner design is a complex task with many compromises. It is not a surprise that some aspects of the design that results aren’t exactly what you would like. Today I am picking on one particular type – the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. This is almost as new as it gets in the airliner design world so you would expect it to be better than what came before. However, having seen a number of them recently, I have been focused on two areas of the design that are rather disappointing. One is the wing root fairing area and the other is the cargo doors.

A nice smooth design is what the old aero guy in me likes to see and the inlets and fairings around the transition from the fuselage into the wing root are pretty ugly. They are obviously there as a result of functionality requirements but it does not look good and I imagine it comes with a drag penalty that has had to be accepted.

The other area is the cargo doors. I am not sure whether this is a function of the load transfer requirements from composite to metal in the hinges but this area looks rather chunky and draggy. I know from previous projects that the nature of composites versus metals means that you can end up with some large joining fixtures to redistribute the loads but there may be other reasons I haven’t thought about. Given how smooth some metallic fuselage cargo doors are, these jumped out at me. Perhaps I have never looked closely enough at other types. Whatever the fairness of it, I just don’t like what they have done here.

Hainan 787

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The San Jose trip also gave me a chance to catch another jet that had been of interest. Hainan Airlines is a Chinese operator. I have seen their jets around at various times but have never had a chance to shoot them close up. I really like the brightness of their livery and had wanted to see one. Unfortunately, my late arrival at San Jose meant their jet had just touched down when I got there. However, it did depart at a convenient time so I managed to get one at last.

San Jose for R2-D2 Boeing 787

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The arrival of a new Star Wars movie is not really a secret. There are more promotional efforts associated with the film by businesses of all types than I can remember for any other release. All Nippon got in on the game quite early and announced that a number of their jets would be carrying Star Wars markings. The first to break cover was a 787-9 with markings to represent R2-D2. My friend Hayman and I made it to San Jose a while back to catch it arriving.

The story of finding it made it to a blog post for GAR which is here. Therefore, I won’t repeat the whole story of how I nearly missed the arrival. If you want to see that, click on the link and you can read the whole thing. After the arrival, we hung around and then headed to the departure end of the field to be ready for its return journey to Tokyo. It is a pretty cool scheme that they have implemented. I will now have to keep an eye out for the other two that they are doing.

Test 787s

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There was a bit of activity at Boeing Field for the fleet of test Dreamliners. Boeing has been in the process of moving the original test airframes around to their final resting places. One of them has been donated to the Museum of Flight so didn’t have to go very far. Others are finding home further afield. Meanwhile, there is still some work for the rest of the test fleet.

I managed to see them both on the ground and in the air. Obviously the flying shots are the ones I prefer but I will take any I can get. It is strange that, during the test program, the development aircraft are the only ones you see and you want to see more of them in airline colors. Once they get well established, the original test frames suddenly have more interest again.