Wednesday, June 16, 2010

First GE powered 787 flies

Photo Courtesy of Liz Matzelle
The first 787 to be powered by GE's GEnx-1B engines finally took o the skies today. In keeping with the 787 tradition, this take off was delayed though this time due to low ceiling clouds and rain showers. It finally lifted off from the Everett runway at around 2:40 PM PT flew around the Seattle area before heading to Moses Lake. An observer told me that the sound of the GEnx engines on the 787 are very conventional sounding compared to the Trent 1000 which have a low pitched buzz saw sound to them. It flew back from Moses Lake and touched down at Boeing Field at about 6:22 PM PT. This now kicks off Boeing-GE certification test flights of the GEnx powered 787. ZA005 joins the Rolls Royce powered test fleet that has been flying for the past 6 months starting with ZA001. Test flights should last another 5 months and the last GE powered aircraft, ZA006, should be flying by July 13th...about 4 weeks from now.

Video courtesy of Liz Matzelle:



ZA005 First Flight from Liz Matzelle on Vimeo.

David Parker Brown of Airlinereporter.com also got a lot of video and photos of today's first flight:

Video and pictures of ZA005 first flight by David Parker Brown

Photos of ZA005 first flight by David Parker Brown

Photos of ZA005 first flight by Liz Matzelle

Flightblogger, Jon Ostrower is writing a in depth article about this particular 787 and its test flight responsibilities.

Flightblogger: Better Know A Dreamliner - Part Five - ZA005

Guy Norris is also writing up a post which should be posted very soon but he does have a couple of pieces up:

Guy Norris: GE powered 787 flies
747-8 and 787 ready for test expansion

Matt Cawby got some amazing video of ZA005 first flight and I highly recommend it:

Matt Cawby: N787FT First Flight

And some video from King5, a Seattle TV station with a unique angle of the take off:


Video Courtesy of King 5

Lastly, ZA003 is flying tonight and when it lands it will push the 787 flight test hours to 1000 flight hours. Stay tuned for information on that.

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