The first Boeing 787 Dreamliner for Royal Air Maroc is out on Boeing's Paine Field flight line, in Everett, on Friday April 23, 2010. (Joshua Trujillo, Seattlepi.com)
It is a Boeing 787 blog-day today!
On Friday, the 17th Boeing 787 Dreamliner made it’s way out of the paint hangar. Due to not having my camera and short on time, I wasn’t able to get up to Paine Field myself to take a look, but luckily the Seattle PI did get a photographer out there.
There are also two all-white Boeing 787’s (photo from @ImperfectSense) sitting out on the line for LAN. Some think they might be willing to paint them in a special livery, but will have to wait to find that out.
The Boeing 787 Dreamliner (ZA003) undergoing cold weather testing in McKinley Climatic Laboratory, Florida
If you have been following the path of the Boeing 787, you know that ZA003 recently made a trip down to Valparaiso, Florida for extreme weather testing. Being in Florida you might assume they are testing the Boeing 787 Dreamliner in just hot and humid climates.
However it just recently went through extreme cold testing of minus 45 degrees Fahrenheit (that is about minus 43 Celsius). How do does this happen? Well, you find a big facility that can create it’s own temperature (and snow). Eglin Air Force Base, just outside of Ft. Walton Beach, has a climatic chamber, large enough to house the Boeing 787. In the mid-1990’s, the chamber was opened up to the general public at a cost of $20,000 to $30,000 per day.
Normally Boeing chaces the cold weather around the globe (normally finding it in Fairbanks, Alaska), but having a controlled environment is so much easier. “Here we say minus 45 and they set the knob to minus 45, and work their magic and get minus 45 and it stays there as long as we want it,” Tom Sanderson, one of the flight test directors for the Boeing 787 told Glenn Farley with KING5.
The Boeing 787 will also undergo extreme hot testing of 115 degrees Fahrenheit (about 46 degrees Celsius) in the same facility. ZA003 is the only Dreamliner with a partial interior. The aircraft will be living at the facility for about two weeks to conduct all the testing needed.
I am sure you want to see more than one photo, luckily I have tracked down some additional media for your enjoyment:
Southwest Airlines is known for having special state livery airplanes. Yesterday, they showed off their newest one: Florida One. The plane will be taking a trip around Florida, showing off the new livery. The newest livery is one of 13 other special liveries already in the Southwest fleet: Arizona One, California One, Illinois One, Lone Star One (Texas), Nevada One, New Mexico One, Maryland One, three Shamu aircraft (SeaWorld), Silver One (celebrating Southwest’s 25th anniversary), Triple Crown One (recognizing Southwest’s top rankings for ontime performance, baggage handling, and Customer satisfaction), and Slam Dunk One (tribute to our NBA partnership).
Florida One required 32 people at the Boeing Company working three shifts over the course of eight days to paint. Over 46 gallons of paint and 16 different colors were used.
Yay! The graduation photo of the newbie class I sat in on!
Have I bored you all with my flight attendant training blogs yet? 🙂 I hope not. I have enjoyed writing them and I hope you have enjoyed reading them. I know I learned quite a bit and have changed my perspective on what flight attendants do. They frek’n rock!
On this final post I just wanted to talk about some thoughts I had about the experience that didn’t fit into one of the other blogs.
I was originally set up to sit in on two classes for the first day, but the trainers did a great job of moving me around to a bunch of different sessions. The cool part was most students didn’t know who I was until the second day, which meant they weren’t behaving just for me.
Unfortunately I wasn't able to slide down their practice slide during my visit!
The classes and personnel there were all very professional, but also fun. There were some very serious topics discussed, but everyone was able to have a good time and laugh. I personally think building a positive relationship with your co-workers and the company you work for is very vital in the training process. By the end of the second day I really felt part of the AirTran flight attendant team.
During my life, I have had to sit through way too many boring PowerPoint presentations, but luckily the ones at the training were far from boring. I flew a red-eye from Seattle to Atlanta, got three hours of sleep and went right to the training facility, but I didn’t yawn once since it was interactive (I was yawning the second day, not from lack of interest, but lack of sleep catching up with me).
Something I never thought about were the different aircraft types airlines have. Unlike a pilot, a flight attendant is not assigned to a certain aircraft type. This means that flight attendants must know how every plane in the field works. Even though AirTran has an “All Boeing Fleet,” The Boeing 717 started its life as a McDonald Douglas MD-95 and is not very similar to the Boeing 737-700. It can’t be easy being a flight attendants on larger airlines like Delta or American that have to know the systems of many different aircraft types.
That's me. Telling the passengers to sit down and shuddup because we are leaving!
The overall training for new flight attendants lasts about four weeks and is quite intense. About five of the new students that I met were flight attendants from other airlines and wanted to change employers since they heard good things about AirTran. One of the trainees, Alan (Hi Alan!), said this was the best training he had since PanAm. That is a huge compliment since PanAm was known for their amazing training.
Last Friday, April 16th, all the newbie flight attendants I met graduated and will start completing test flights to hone their skills before being released into the wild. CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL OF YOU! Now they will ride on some flights to be tested and then end up on the bottom of the seniority list for which flights they have.
A nice AirTran Boeing 737-700 drawing in the trainer's break room.
Seniority seems to be a pretty big deal in the airline business. The higher up you are, the more benefits you get. Flight attendants will be flying 20 days of the month and off for ten. Those at the bottom of the food chain (ie newbie hires) get last dibs on what days and flights they will fly on. It was interesting that to determine seniority for those in the class, BINGO balls were used.
I went into the training, not quite sure what I was going to get out of it. I think there are a lot of misconceptions of what flight attendants do and the glamor of traveling the world and just serving drinks. I hope this blog series has let you see how complex and important the flight attendant’s job really is. Almost every flight attendant I spoke with says it is the best job in the world and they couldn’t imagine doing anything else. To me, that is pretty cool.
A special thanks to AirTran and all the wonderful people that made this blog series possible!
