Saturday, August 13, 2011

Boeing looking to complete certification test flights today

Boeing is expected to complete the system functionality and reliability testing today using ZA102. The aircraft will fly to Salt Lake City International Airport from Paine Field then on to Billings Logan international Airport in Montana and finally back to Paine Field. As of last night the aircraft has accumulated about 280 test flight hours and needs another 7 hours to finish the required FAA certification testing. Today's flights would last about 2hrs, 3hrs and 1.5 hrs respectively getting to the needed 287 hours that will fulfill the FAA mandates.

It is expected that Boeing will submit the final paperwork to the FAA around Monday and then to have the final type certification later in the week after the FAA Board meets to discuss the results. First delivery is expected around mid September for the Trent-1000 powered version of the aircraft to ANA followed by the GEnx-1B powered version sometime in the 4th quarter to JAL. Boeing actually has more orders for the GE powered version of the 787 then the Rolls Royce powered version so they would need to make final certification of this version a priority though it is still unknown when they will start F&R/ETOPs testing.

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