Update 20-Boeing 787 Perfect take-off from Paine Field. Landing is scheduled for 4-5 hours from now at Boeing field. I`ll see what they say tonight and update again once there is a report.

[edit on 12/15/2009 by Zaphod58]

Best quote of the day comes from one of the Seattle news channels. "This is like Star Wars and Twilight for Aviation Geeks."

The 787 is coming down early because of weather, but all indications are that the plane performed wonderfully.

The flight is still going on. Right now, FlightAware has them at 86 knots at 5000 feet. I bet that`s a fun flight deck to be on going that slow.

Sweet

Even though they had mentioned it before the upward flex of the wing tips is impressive.

Congrats to all at Boeing

It just landed. Perfectly.

Originally posted by Benevolent Heretic
It just landed. Perfectly.

Yep 3 minutes ago. They have a pretty agressive test schedule planned so it will be interesting to see if they can make up any time there.

Man that is such a beautiful plane...I watched all the podcasts on the 787 site(www.newairplane.com), they have some amazing and very cool tech in them.Even the windows are high tech, push a button and you can adjust the tint electronicly.

They should release a report on the flight within 24 hours. Look for the next "official" update when it`s out.

Update 21- Post flight update
No word much on handling, but ZA001 landed at 135pm local, after he first flight. Max altitude was 13,200 feet, short of the 15,000 they were aiming for. But the speeds during the flight are what are amazing me. Top speed was 220 knots, slowest speed was 41 knots. That is the slowest I have EVER heard a jet aircraft flying during a test flight. Even post stall they are usually faster than that. More when a more detailed report is released.

41 knots?? That doesn't sound right.

Boeing has yet to comment on the flight. Speeds and altitudes courtesy flightAware.com.

Update 22- Boeing 787 Post flight
Boeing still hasn`t said much, but pilot Mike Carriker reportedly cycled the gear at least once during the flight. The flight was completed with gear and flaps down, with the exception of the cycling test. The FlightGlobal blog page has pics from the T-Birds that were flying with ZA001. Three beautiful pics in flight.

Not really a first flight notice, but issues with the 747-8F fleet. They appear to be minor, and easy fixes however. They are inspecting the stringers that run along the fuselage, because some of them were overmachined and are prone to cracking. The three test aircraft have been cleared to fly, and are preparing for flutter testing. They'll move to Palmdale soon for further testing.

The other issue appears to be a landing gear door issue. They're investigating a "Flaps 30 gear door buffet".

The stringer inspections will continue on production aircraft and could be a long difficult process to find and fix.