A week at BFI - Tuesday
This is the second post of five I'm doing this week detailing the aircraft movements at Boeing Field (BFI) from my perspective as an aircraft spotter. To see Monday's post, click here.
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TUESDAY, 23 FEBURARY 2010
Well all good things come to an end. The wonderful sunny days this
area has been having are now gone. Today the weather at the field was
a constant high overcast with some light rain showers in the early
afternoon. I often complain during the summer when there's a streak
of sunny days for a long period of time (I think I've been living
here too long), but I certainly don't complain about it during our
long winter season.
I got BFI earlier than usual today due to a dentist appointment I
foolishly scheduled six months ago for 1200 Noon. Because of this, I had to
go to the field a bit earlier to catch a Hainan Airlines 737-84P
departing BFI at 0950 so I could cross it off my 'to catch' list. You
see, last October I set a goal to catch every 737NG off the line
while on a test flight (ramp shots don't count). It may sounds
simple, but when Boeing makes roughly one 737NG every day and some
planes only fly two test flights before delivery, it's a bit harder
than it may seem (I haven't missed a single 737NG off the line since
October '09...yet). I arrived to the field just as my Hainan was
taxiing to runway 13R and was followed a half hour later by an Air
China 737-89L. Just before I had to leave the field, I caught an
arriving B1 flight of a future Ryanair 737-8AS, a very common airline
to come off the line.
The interesting non-Boeing test flight movement of the day was a
US Navy P-3C Orion from NAS Whidbey Island on a full stop landing (pictured above). It arrived as "DEEP SEA 39" and
taxiied back to the runway for departure. The Orion departed after a
fairly long IFR spacing delay for South Lake Tahoe airport (TVL)
using the same callsign it arrived as. Navy Orion's come through BFI every once and a while for a touch and go or low approach due to the close proximity to their base (roughly 95 km).
After my hour long dentist appointment, I took the short drive
back to BFI to see what else was going on. Nothing else happened that
I was interested in, but then I heard "Boeing 001" (787 No.
1) call into the Boeing telemetry room frequency on my scanner.
Earlier in the day I saw the port side engine being worked on and
figured it wouldn't fly today, but sure enough it did. The airplane
left at 1400 after resolving some minor speed brake and primary
flight display issues. I didn't bother to take a picture of today's
departure because it raining pretty good out at the time, but not to
worry, I've taken many
pictures of it already!