Plethora of updates

As we get closer to first flight, bloggers and journalist are sending out all sorts of updates so let's summarize.

Basically the gist of the news coming out is that Boeing has started (and confirmed) final gauntlet for the 787. The reason for another gauntlet is during the last six months while Boeing dealt with the side of body issue, engineers made further refinements on many of the 787's systems. The final (shorter) gauntlet is to verify the modifications work and to verify the integrity of the entire 787 system integration.

Sources have told me that they still plan to finish gauntlet testing tomorrow. Now according to Guy Norris, Boeing has switch the order of the gauntlet blocks with testing the failure modes first and will test the B1 flight profile tomorrow.

The weather looks to play a major role on when the 787 takes off but before that Boeing still has to finish the final gauntlet, carry out taxi tests and more importantly give clearance for the 787 side of body issue. Boeing said it would take ten days to get the results so I suspect tomorrow and Friday are going to be big news days as that information should come out at that point.

I think Boeing will set a first flight date either tomorrow or Friday if the side of body is cleared and I think it'll occur on Tuesday, Dec. 15th weather permitting.

Until further news here are some of today's news links:

Randy's Journal

Flightblogger

Yet another Flightblogger

Guy Norris

Matt Cawby (has a great video of ZA001 performing some gauntlet testing)