Boeing 787 first flight watch: 30 days or fewer

Boeing began the next phase of preflight tests on its 787 Dreamliner on Saturday.

The “intermediate gauntlet” tests put the 787 through a variety of in-flight situations while it’s on the ground here in Everett, verifying whether the aircraft responds as envisioned.

Boeing’s Randy Tinseth blogged about the gauntlet tests on Sunday. He also posted a Boeing video of the first engine start on May 21, giving us a close-up look at the Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines in action (link under second photo). Tinseth says that Boeing will provide an update when the intermediate gauntlet tests conclude.

For more on the 787’s preflight test progress:

Aviation Week’s Guy Norris provided a look at the different phases in this blog post.

And FlightBlogger described revisions to the gauntlet in this post.

At a conference last week, Boeing’s Jim McNerney again said that the 787 will fly by the end of June. That leaves Boeing just 30 days to put its delayed Dreamliner in the air. Boeing pulled in the gauntlet tests from the schedule outlined by Scott Fancher, 787 program leader, on May 21. Fancher indicated then that the tests would start in two weeks, around June 4.

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