On April 29, 2007 a Thomson Airways Boeing 757, flight 253H, was taking off from Manchester Airport on its way to Spain when a bird (most people said a heron, but it looks black and smaller to me) got sucked into its starboard engine. The video shows the bird going in, the flame out and the plane landing safely at Manchester Airport.
Yesterday, ZA004 took to the skies over Washington state (and looks like she might have dipped down into Oregon a little bit) on her first flight. Randy Tinseth, Vice President of Marketing for Boeing points out in his blog that ZA004 is sporting the Boeing “light” livery. This livery just paints the aircraft in solid white, with a line going down the fuselage. This saves Boeing time and money, versus the full livery) and I think it looks pretty slick.
Each of the Boeing test planes have a lead pilot. Captain Heather Ross is the one in charge of ZA004 and was at the controls yesterday. She is one of ten lucky pilots who have been able to fly the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
Tinseth is expecting all six of the test planes should be airborne by the end of the second quarter.
Above is a video from KING5 showing the landing of ZA004 yesterday at Boeing Field.
This is the fourth Boeing 787 made (notated by ZA004), but only the third one to fly. The third aircraft (ZA003) is the one I was able to tour the interior previously and Boeing will be flying it shortly. Today the fourth one got to spread its wings early, taking off from Paine Field.
I wasn’t able to get out today and watch the take off, but Sandy with the Future of Flight was there and got video from above. Currently she is flying over eastern Washington.
This video was created using FAA data for flight traffic for a 24 hour period over the United States. You can learn more and see some awesome stills of the project on their website.
This video gives a great inside look at the process of painting a plane in a special livery. As a big fan of airline livery, I always love seeing the special liveries that airlines come up with. I just with the industry had more!
Video found via Dan Webb’s blog Things in the Sky.