First the main news: Boeing is hoping to schedule first flight for sometime around late April 2009. My guess: April 20th.
Around Dec. 23 to December 28th of this year, Dreamliner 1, ZA001, will have an aqueous wash of the wing fuel tanks. This indicates that the wing build and the wing instrumentation is pretty much complete. The aqueous wash is to remove carbon shavings and other contaminants from the wing fuel tanks. It's not known if it has to be rolled out of the assembly building for this wash.
The fastener replacement on ZA001 should be completed by the end of December.
ZA002 should have it's fastener replacment done by mid February but it may not have its first flight until August of 2009. I have not yet found out why ZA002 is so far behind and it could put the entire certification schedule for the 787 into disarray.
ZA001 will leave building 40-26 (the final assembly building) for the paint shop around Feb. 24th to get a fresh coat of paint which should be done by March 2. After that ZA001 might go to 40-24 prior to going to the paint hanger though that has not been decided yet. ZA001 might be factory complete by Feb. 24th though there might be some traveled work taken out to the flight line.
Lastly, ZY998, the fatigue test air frame might be moved to the flight line prior to year end even though the build is not yet complete. No reason is known.
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5 comments:
Good job Uresh. Now, I hope that they do what they're saying they are doing this time. I believe is obout time they take this baby to the flight line. About the second test plane being so far behind the second, I can't understand that either. What's in the second test plane that makes it be so late? Interesting to find that out. Thanks for the work done!!
Thanks, I appreciate the kind words and will strive to bring you more news! It's very troubling about LN 2 and if this airplane is delayed it will hurt the certification efforts. The only difference I know about is that it came into Everett more complete compared to LN 1 but less complete than LN 3 and LN 4. PEr haps there was some issue that is unique to this airplane that has become known during the final assembly process.
Level of completeness means nothing in case the hardware is defect, not fully inspected or in need of replacement due to engineering changes.
To qualify for certification, flight and ground test aircraft need to be representative of the series production version.
As is is approaching both the end of 2008, as well as the end of the range you had given for the aqueous wash of LN1's fuel tanks, do you have any more information regarding these tasks?
There should be an update by another blogger on Monday.
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