Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Boeing 787 Flight Test surpasses 1,000 flights

Today the Boeing flight test fleet flew it's 1,000th flight when ZA004 took to the air from Yuma Marine Corp Air Station for a 30 minute test flight. To date, Boeing has conducted 1,004 test flights since the program started on De. 15, 2009. Boeing has picked up the flight test tempo and has been flying all the test flight airplanes though ZA102 which had joined the test flight fleet earlier this year has now been sequestered in an ATS Hangar for unknown reasons. It is there with ZA101 which is supposed to be conducting ground tests and this may indicate that Boeing is incorporating changes and/or repairs to these planes before they recommence testing activities.

Another milestone for the test flight fleet is on the horizon with 3,000 flight test hours looming. Currently Boeing has surpassed 2,969 flight test hours. I suspect that this milestone will be reached sometime this weekend as Boeing is starting the final push to complete flight testing.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Any idea if there are revised flying hour figures for completion of airframe an/or engine certifications?

Uresh said...

I don't have those numbers and frankly I'm not sure if Boeing knows how many hours will be needed to finish up 787 certification and testing. Right now they're measuring the completion by the percentage of test points they have succussfully have completed to meet FAA/EASA derticiation requirements.