First 787 Dreamliner ever built heads to Nagoya, Japan for airport display

(Photo by Joe G. Walker)

Nearly eight years after it first rolled out of the Everett factory, Boeing’s very first 787 Dreamliner lifted off to a final flight to Japan Sunday.

 

The Boeing jet will be displayed at Chubu Centrair International Airport in Nagoya, Japan, in recognition of the fact that so much of Dreamliner assembly is done in Japan.
 

About 35 percent of the Dreamliner’s airframe – the main wing, forward fuselage and center wing box – is built in the Nagoya area, which is in the central industrial zone southeast of Tokyo.

 

Boeing flies these sections to final assembly in Everett and North Charleston, South Carolina aboard the 747-400-based Dreamlifter.“Centrair is delighted that Boeing has chosen to donate the historically significant first test plane, ZA001, to Greater Nagoya, which plays such an important role in the manufacturing of the 787 Dreamliner,” said a statement from the airport organizers.
 

Departs Seattle Boeing Field (BFI/KBFI) on June 21, 2015 bound for Nagoya, Japan and its new permanent home.

(Photo by Joe G. Walker)

The group's organizers said they hope the donation “will spur the imagination of the young people of Japan and the next generation of aerospace pioneers.”

 

The Dreamliner now in Japan, 787-8 (ZA001) (40690/1) N787BA, is the highest-profile 787 in the series.

 

This is the aircraft that was infamously rolled out to the public on July 8, 2007, a date chosen to match the aircraft’s 787 model number.

 

But at that time the jet was a mere shell of an airplane, lacking most operating systems, and with various airframe structures fastened together temporarily for the roll-out.

 

More than two years later, on a very chilly Tuesday, Dec. 15, the same jet rotated off the runway and lifted into the leaden skies over Everett on the model's first flight.

 

About a thousand Boeing employees waved enthusiastically, and hundreds of aerospace journalists from around the world watched, while turning their backs against the cold, wet wind.

 

About a thousand Boeing employees waved enthusiastically, and hundreds of aerospace journalists from around the world watched, while turning their backs against the cold, wet wind.

 

The aircraft then became the lead jet in Boeing’s flight test program for the Dreamliner model. Loaded with a full suite of instrumentation, the jet clocked in hundreds of hours on tests focused on aerodynamic and structural performance.

 

Despite performing well on these tests, the first jet was too heavy and had too many retrofits to be competitive versus the newer Dreamliners now emerging from production, which is part of why Boeing is donating it.

 

The first jet was at the epicenter of many of the model’s three years of problems, including production delays, part shortages, hairline cracks on some early wings, and overheating and fire of the early lithium ion batteries.
 

Boeing already has donated the third Dreamliner to the Seattle Museum of Flight, and the second to the Pima Air and Space Museum, in Tucson, Arizona.

 

(Steve Wilhelm - Puget Sound Business Journal)