BREAKING: VIDEO & PICTURES: Boeing 787 Dreamliner lifts off on maiden flight
After more than two years, Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner has taken to the sky, marking the maiden sortie of the world’s first majority-composite jetliner.
Under the command of chief pilot Mike Carriker and engineering pilot Randy Neville, Boeing’s first 787 test aircraft - designated ZA001 - departed the runway at the company’s Everett, Washington facility just after 10:28PST.
Operating as Boeing 001 Experimental, ZA001 sped down runway 34L for its first take-off roll, marking the first time Boeing has flown a clean-sheet aircraft since the 777-200 first flew in June 1994 from the same spot.
The flight of the 787-8 comes 944 days after final assembly first began on the aircraft which is made up of more than 50% composite materials by weight.
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