EVERETT – The world’s farthest-flying airplane took a stroll around the block Tuesday morning – between Port Angeles and Astoria, Ore.
The Boeing Co.’s 777-200LR Worldliner “flew perfectly,” pilot Suzanna Darcy-Hennemann told reporters after the plane’s first three-hour test flight. “She came through the factory great, the flight line great, and she’s flying great.”
She and co-pilot Frank Santoni said the first flight was routine. After leaving sun-splashed Paine Field at 10 a.m., they kept the plane at between 15,000 and 17,000 feet while testing the flaps and landing gear.
For the most part, they stayed over the sparsely populated Olympic Peninsula, Santoni said, but “we made a trek over toward Mount Rainier. It’s so beautiful out, we couldn’t resist.”
The flight ended at Boeing Field in Seattle.
The flight was the first step in a seven-month program aimed at getting the Worldliner certified by U.S. and European aviation agencies. Boeing plans to deliver the first plane to launch customer Pakistan International Airlines early in 2006.
Boeing’s latest 777 derivative is a 300-passenger jet capable of flying more than 10,800 miles – far enough to link any two cities on the globe. It’s the fifth and final passenger version of the 777, although Boeing plans to build a freighter based on the Worldliner airframe.
The plane has the powerful GE90-110B engines and fuel-efficient wings of its extended-range sister jet, the 777-300ER, but it’s about 33 feet shorter.
The combination of big engines and smaller plane – with no passengers or cargo on board – made taking off fun, Santoni said. “It put us in the sky so fast, it was like a catapult shot.”
Boeing believes it will sell up to 300 Worldliners, along with 200 777 freighters. That’s a lofty target. So far, Boeing has sold only five – three to the Pakistanis and two to EVA Air of Taiwan.
Boeing executives say sales should pick up as the world’s airlines recover from the worldwide slump and start looking for ways they can use the new plane, which can fly routes no other plane has been able to fly before.
To help with that, the company plans to take the second Worldliner, which is being assembled in Everett now, to the Paris Air Show this summer, then take it on a world tour to show it off to potential customers.
Boeing launched the 777 program in 1990, and Tuesday’s takeoff was the fifth first flight for new models of the jet.
Even after all that time, first flights are still exciting, said Lars Andersen, Boeing vice president in charge of longer-range 777s.
“It’s a day that all of the people who worked on the airplane can be proud,” he said.
Kenyon Jensen is an engineer from Mukilteo who worked on the plane’s cargo compartment. For him, Tuesday was the first time he had watched a plane take its maiden flight.
“It was pretty exciting,” said Jensen, one of several hundred employees and well-wishers to watch the Worldliner lift off. “It was pretty great to see the airplane take off and know that I was part of it.”
Reporter Bryan Corliss: 425-339-3454 or corliss@heraldnet.com.
Julie Busch / The Herald
Boeing Co. employees and well-wishers send the 777-200LR Worldliner off on its first flight from Paine Field on Tuesday.
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