EVERETT – For a moment Sunday, the largest building in the world was quiet – almost churchlike.
Gone was the clinking and clamoring that epitomize a jet factory. Instead, calming lights cast a fuzzy blue glow hundreds of feet below onto red carpet and thousands of chairs. Workers busied themselves attending not to an airplane but to the finishing touches of an international event that would show off Boeing’s first new jetliner in 13 years.
Two hours before the Boeing Co.’s rollout of the 787 Dreamliner was to begin at 3:30 p.m., 787 employees Raymi Peterson and Carla Stead practiced ballet moves amid the rows of chairs, working off some of the nervous energy that goes along with preparing for a crowd of 15,000 people.
“I’m more excited than I ever thought I would be,” said Stead, a 10-year Boeing employee. “It brings everyone together from all over the world.”
Making the world a smaller place – that’s the goal of the Boeing Co.’s Dreamliner, said Jim McNerney, chief executive. On Sunday, Boeing executives, 787 employees, airline customers and Boeing partners around the world paid homage to the company’s new plane.
By 3 p.m., the quiet had given way to a rising buzz. The cathedrallike setting morphed into that of rock concert. Boeing’s event was broadcast over satellite TV and the Internet with the intent of reaching as many as 100 million viewers. The company’s partner sites in Japan, South Carolina, Italy and Kansas all participated in live feeds into the Everett event.
The Dreamliner differs from previous Boeing airplanes in its fuel-efficiency, its mostly carbon fiber composite structure and its global supply chain, as noted by rollout host and former “NBC Nightly News” anchor Tom Brokaw.
“This team that has been assembling it around the world is a testament to how people can and have worked together,” Brokaw said.
Five years ago, the Dreamliner was just a collection of ideas on a piece of paper, said Michael Carriker, a Boeing pilot who will fly the first 787 in mid-September. Three years ago, it was images on a PowerPoint presentation. Then, the Dreamliner began to take shape on a computer screen.
“It’s just so cool to see all the hours of hard work and ideas come together,” he said.
New airplanes don’t come along every day.
When a manufacturer such as Boeing introduces a new aircraft, it has to make sure that plane incorporates the best and latest technology, said Mike Bair, vice president of the 787 program.
“You’ve got to get it right,” Bair said.
With 677 orders from 47 airlines before the Dreamliner’s debut, Boeing seems to have hit the mark with the 787.
Before the rollout, the chief executive of the world’s largest leasing company was eagerly waiting to see the airplane because Boeing hadn’t allowed him to see it yet.
“You’d think that if you buy 74 airplanes, they’d let you take a peek,” said International Lease Finance Co.’s Steve Udvar-Hazy.
Continental Airlines’ Jeff Misner was every bit as excited.
The chief financial officer can’t wait until Boeing delivers in 2009 the first of 25 Dreamliners that Continental has on order. The airline, which was the first U.S.-based carrier to order a Dreamliner, initially will put the plane in service on routes between New York and Asia.
“This is a great, great aircraft,” Misner said.
And, “We want this new plane bad.”
A representative from Thai Airways hadn’t caught completely the Dreamliner fever. His airline hasn’t yet ordered a 787.
“A lot of airlines close to us and competing with us have ordered them. We are eager to have one too,” said Pithan Bholnivas, an aircraft engineer and one of two company officials on hand.
As airline customers enjoyed their first glimpse of the Dreamliner in Everett, 8,500 Boeing retirees and employees gathered at Qwest Field in Seattle to watch the event. Boeing offered free tickets to the event and around 23,000 people reserved seats, but fewer than half showed up, said company spokeswoman Kevan Goff-Parker.
Gov. Chris Gregoire and several Boeing executives addressed the stadium crowd.
“I came today on behalf of 6.5 million Washingtonians to say, ‘We’re proud of you,’ ” Gregoire said. “For years, you have been connecting the world. Today, you are changing the world.”
Locally, the Future of Flight Aviation Center &Boeing Tour was host to a rollout celebration where the public, along with the VIPs assembled on the museum’s roof, turned their eyes eastward to the Boeing plant. They applauded when the plane first poked out of the paint hangar and was towed to the assembly plant for its official debut.
The Walkenhorst family of Mukilteo gathered among the onlookers.
“This is right in our back yard. It would seem almost disrespectful not to come,” Kristin Walkenhorst said. “The fact it’s being built here is important. Boeing is such a stronghold in this area. Our property values are tied to it, and the community’s tied to it.”
At about 4:25 p.m., Boeing rolled its first Dreamliner, fully painted with customer logos, back into its final assembly bay in Everett. Thousands of employees converged upon the Dreamliner.
And Millie Hughes was one of them. For 50 years, Hughes has worked for the Boeing Co., first in Wichita, Kan., and for the last 40 years in Everett. She has seen just about every rollout Boeing has done in Everett.
As Hughes posed for a picture under the belly of the Dreamliner, she reached up and touched the deep Boeing blue.
“It’s the best one yet,” she said.
Herald writers Kaitlin Manry, Eric Fetters and Jerry Cornfield contributed to this report.
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