787 Flight Testing picking up

787 flight test picked up this week with 4 of the 5 test airplanes, ZA002, ZA003, ZA004 and ZA005 having flown this week. ZA001 is expected to fly by this coming Sunday (July 18th) but may fly as early as today (July 15th). ZA005 had flown to Great Fall, Montana on Tuesday July 13th to test high wind performance of the 787 and did a a series of take offs and landings in winds with gusts of up to 50 mph. Boeing meteorologists were looking for those types of conditions to test the 787s high wind performance.

Coming up will be ZA003's highly anticipated flight to Farnborough the 787s first flight overseas. It should leave sometime on Saturday evening head towards to North Pole to fly figure 8s and test the navigation system and then fly on to Farnborough where it will land around 9 AM local time on July 18th after an 11 hour flight from Boeing Field. The airplane will leave Farnborough on the afternoon of the 20th to head back to Boeing Field.