Yes!
That was my first thought upon seeing the sleek Boeing Dreamliner cut through gray gloom outside The Herald’s west-facing windows.
Yes, there it is, not a pie-in-the-sky dream, but concrete — or I should say composite material — proof of accomplishment. Tuesday’s first takeoff of the 787 represents a job well done. It took many hundreds of jobs, in many places, to accomplish.
The history-making first flight clears the air, leaving in its wake an atmosphere of determination and hope. We all know that the 787 program weathered delays. Our region unhappily absorbed news that the Boeing Co. will build its second 787 assembly line in South Carolina.
Yet there it was plain as day, a bright object in Tuesday’s dark sky. I couldn’t watch it for long. It was there and gone, up and away.
That image, of something rising, stirred a second thought, this one about a children’s movie. Have you seen “Up”?
The animated Disney-Pixar film tells the story of a sad old man whose wife died before the couple could fulfill a dream of traveling to South America. His house, hitched to a bunch of helium-filled balloons, takes flight after the man grudgingly meets an enthusiastic kid on a merit-badge quest.
Ed Asner lends his voice to the old curmudgeon. Through the course of “Up,” the man evolves from being stuck in the past into a person engaged in life, with someone new — the boy — to care about.
Still with me? It’s obviously not a story about next-generation airplanes. “Up” isn’t about Boeing, but it is about change.
Here, with the new 787, Boeing workers and we observers are seeing dizzying change. Get used to it. Constructed of new materials and assembled from parts made in far-flung places by other companies, the 787 is change incarnate.
The Boeing Co. has been the pride of our region for a century. It was 1910, 100 years ago come March, that William Boeing bought a shipyard on the Duwamish River in Seattle, a place that would become his first airplane factory. In 1969, Everett won its place in the archives of Boeing history when the 747 made its first flight.
Someday, some writer will look up the Boeing 787 and find that on Dec. 15, 2009, people looked up in the sky and saw a big change.
Herald reporter Andy Rathbun was at Paine Field when the 787 took off Tuesday. He spoke with Glenn Wysen, a 10-year-old from Seattle who likely has little interest in Boeing history or how jetliners have been made over the years. His eyes were only on that new plane as he experienced a new day.
“We’ll talk about it when we’re old — ‘I saw the first plastic plane fly,’ ” the boy said after calling the flight “awesome.”
Like that happy kid in “Up,” Glenn comes from a generation raised on rapid change and ever-improving technology. Even children know what lots of older people still have to learn — that everything changes all the time.
In 2003, when Boeing announced a contest to let the public help name the new plane (there were four choices: the Dreamliner, eLiner, Global Cruiser or Stratoclimber), the airplane company teamed up with AOL-Time Warner for the online voting and marketing effort. Today, Boeing would be more apt to pick Facebook or Twitter. See? Nothing stays the same.
As much as Everett may wish it could produce every 787 — not only every 787, but every piece of each 787 — our world is not the same as it was when earlier Boeing planes took flight. Instant communication has made it a smaller place. World-class quality will always matter, but cost matters too.
Change isn’t easy. Sometimes change isn’t welcome. Get used to it.
Seeing that 787 take flight, we should all be so proud — yes, of this Dreamliner first assembled here, but also of Boeing and its workers for successfully adapting to huge change.
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460, muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
