If you had a giant jet and 18 airborne hours to kill, what would you do? For a Boeing test crew, the answer was ’get creative with your flight track.’ While conducting Extended-range Twin-engine Operations (ETOPS) testing on a 787 Dreamliner, the crew took it for a cross-country spin at 39,000 feet that traced a very specific path over the U.S.
For anyone watching a flight tracking app or website (or following Boeing on Twitter), the image was clear: a perfect aerial outline of a 787 with a wingspan that stretched from Texas to Michigan. The aerial sketch was pointed towards Puget Sound, home to Boeing Commercial Airplanes. According to Boeing, the flight lasted for 18 hours and 1 minute. It covered 22 states and about 9,900 miles.
Team Boeing has done this before. Last February they wrote MAX over Washington, Idaho, and Montana with a 737 MAX and there was an airborne salute to the Seattle Seahawks a few years ago.
Learn more at Boeing.
