The first 787 Dreamliner to enter airline service with Japan's All Nippon Airways arrived on the Everett flight line late last week. The aircraft is currently buttoned up for storage while its flight test brethren are receiving the wing fix and will eventually be registered JA801A. Boeing has said the aircraft - ZA100 - will have a limited role in the flight test program to validate some weight saving structural changes. ZA100 entered final assembly in Everett in mid-June.
In addition, production standard 787s will not receive their engines for many months for two reasons. First, they are the most expensive single part of the aircraft and waiting to take delivery is good for the bottom line. Second, Boeing and Rolls-Royce are using ZA004 to test an upgraded version of the Trent 1000 to meet fuel burn targets before incorporating the changes into the production fleet. According to Boeing's latest schedule, delivery of JA801A, the seventh flying 787, is planned for late next year.
As you can see, only the tail is painted so far, begging the question: Is ANA getting a new and/or special livery for its first 787?
on October 25, 2009 9:17 AM | Reply
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on October 25, 2009 10:51 AM | Reply
Jon,
Interesting that there is still significant development work on the Trent 1000, to make the fuel numbers work.
Also, I have heard that ANA is doing a special livery for their first 787. Only a handful of people inside ANA, and possibly now at Boeing know the details though.
on October 25, 2009 2:35 PM | Reply
Jon:
What are in the crates hanging from the engine pylons? Assume parts for attaching the engines...are they hung for weight reasons, or so they won't get lost? ;-)
on October 25, 2009 3:26 PM | Reply
Weight reasons. You don't want one of those dropped on your foot!
on October 25, 2009 3:34 PM | Reply
>Is ANA getting a new and/or special livery for its first 787?
...or do they just want to wait if ANA will still take the aircraft after all future nasty little surprises have summed up during the following year(s) until final delivery of this machine?
on October 25, 2009 5:53 PM | Reply
The dummy engine weights are supposed to prevent the airplane tipping onto its tail as could otherwise happen, especially if a few people are inside the rear fuselage.
on October 25, 2009 6:29 PM | Reply
I'm aware that they are incorporating the wing fix into the production line at some point in time, but does this "production" 787 have the same wing box issue?
I can't wait to see a possibly new livery for the 787. They had some for the 777-300s and they always have fun and exciting livery in they domestics ie: the cow 767!! brilliant!
on October 25, 2009 10:07 PM | Reply
This bird was in 40-25 two weeks ago. Nice to see her come out of paint. Number 2-4 for ANA are next on the assembly line. No 4 has a pre-painted section 41 from Spirit, if I remember correctly. 2 and 3 were not pre-painted.
From the picture, it looks like the 787 has a nose-down attitude like the 330.
Now spool up those Trents and get these puppies airborne. Want to hear that glorious sound.
on October 26, 2009 2:19 AM | Reply
The early build airplanes are leaving the factory without interiors. Presumably this and other finish work will be done at San Antonio.
on October 26, 2009 7:17 AM | Reply
Regarding the engine blocks; Remember that the center of gravity of the airplane (any tricycle-gear airplane) is just forward of the main gear. You want it far enough ahead of the main gear that the airplane doesn't end up sitting on its tail (although unloading cargo aircraft from the front without moving the aft-most cargo forwards as you do it can still lead to airplanes sitting on their tails), but you want it pretty close to the main gear so that the main gear takes pretty much all the weight. Now, the engines are very heavy (around 10% of the weight of the airplane, going by the weights on Wikipedia), and they're well forward of the main gear. So if you take them out, the CG moves aft quite a bit, and the airplane can end up on its tail unless there's something hanging from the pylons. This reminds me of a picture from early 747-100 production when P&W was way behind on engine delivery, and a lot of 747s were sitting outside the Everett factory all with blocks hanging from their wings. I can't find the image online but I think it's in Joe Sutter's 747 book.
DX7, in the picture you'll see that the nosewheel is lower on the image than the main gear. This means that the nose-down attitude comes from the photographer being higher up than the airplane, rather than from the nose gear being shorter than the main gear.
And I'm curious to see what this special livery will look like...
on October 26, 2009 8:01 AM | Reply
Some fun pictures showing why you don't want the CG any further aft than it already is:
pubs.usgs.gov/pinatubo/casa/fig6.jpg
www.aerospaceweb.org/aircraft/jetliner/b747/b747_21.jpg
abclocal.go.com/images/plane_belly_081605_ss_01.jpg
abclocal.go.com/images/plane_belly_081605_ss_04.jpg
on October 26, 2009 8:56 AM | Reply
Yikes. Those are wild shots - never seen anything like that before. Does it need a D check after something like that?
And an aside: why are the rudders always painted separately?
on October 26, 2009 9:48 AM | Reply
After something like that, I'm fairly sure you'd want a mechanic in the empenage looking very carefully along the load paths from the tail skid to determine which parts got bent, and you'd want to repair or replace those parts. (I know of at least one case of a DC-9 up on jacks going through one of those heavy inspections at an MRO, and at the end when they were lowering the airplane they lowered the tail jack a little bit faster than the other jacks, and the airplane fell back onto its tail. The jack pierced right through the aft pressure bulkhead, which is one of the hardest repairs you could find in your hands.)
About the rudders: That's not my area of expertise, but what I've been told is; The control surfaces need to be mass-balanced, so that they don't continuously pull the control system one way or the other. On the rudder, the weight of the paint is a significant-enough fraction of the part's weight that you want to paint it BEFORE you balance it, otherwise the paint could unbalance it a little bit. That wouldn't be the end of the world (and you do see airplanes coming out of the paint hangar with re-painted rudders once in a while) but you might as well avoid it.
on October 26, 2009 11:53 AM | Reply
Whats the point of putting these frames together without a firm fix for the wing in place yet?
on October 26, 2009 12:48 PM | Reply
@Wes: The side-of-body fix has been designed to be very, very stout. All the production airplanes will get the same fix until the permanent redesign enter the stream.
on October 26, 2009 3:11 PM | Reply
@Wingbender..... Has Boeing announced how many aircraft will require the modification procedure? Also, do you know which production ship will get the first set of redesigned wings? ( If you know but are not allowed to publicly comment on that because it has not been publicly announced yet then just tell us your favorite airplane.Well use the thumbscrews on some else!) :-)
on October 26, 2009 6:07 PM | Reply
I don't know what line number will incorporate the permanent redesign. I'd speculate that neither does Boeing at this point.
on October 26, 2009 8:44 PM | Reply
Love seeing the B787 photos, but, when can we see the bird off the ground?
on October 27, 2009 11:04 AM | Reply
I don't think that the unpainted fuselage is a prerequisite for a new livery in the sidelines. It makes much more sense that the full paint job hasn't been applied to avoid scratches and damage to the paintwork. It must cost more to apply the airlines livery design than just a plane white coating - a lot of money to waste if it gets pranged.
My question is why does Boeing hang blocks off the engine mounts when the engines aren't attached? I've never seen these on other manufacturer's aircraft - notably Airbus.
on October 27, 2009 11:26 AM | Reply
What happened to the aircraft that was already in full ANA livery?
on October 27, 2009 11:29 AM | Reply
What happened to the 787 already in full ANA livery?
on October 27, 2009 11:31 AM | Reply
What happened to the 787 already in full ANA livery?
on October 27, 2009 2:53 PM | Reply
Allan; As of Oct 9, according to the Paine Field blog, the ANA-livery flight-test 787 has been in the temporary hangar on the flightline:
kpae.blogspot.com/2009/10/paine-field-october-9.html
I think the blog would show pictures of it if it moved, but I don't really know 100% for sure. All I know is what I see on that blog and what I see from the road as I drive by each morning.
mcpcshowcaseHD, about the blocks hanging from the engine mounts; Care to scroll up the page? ;]
on November 6, 2009 11:21 AM | Reply
Thanks. My question is answered to some degree. But why don't Airbus do this? Are their planes not as tail heavy?