Boeing is pointing more and more to a late December first flight target for the 787, and definitely more than a month away as I suggested in my previous (admittedly late night) blog post. As the company points out, the side-of-body modification is not yet complete on ZA001, and preparations for flight remain on hold until validation tests on static test airframe ZY997 are finished. Even then there’s more waiting to go through while Boeing and the FAA evaluate the results and confirm the design meets the required goals. Only at this point will ZA001, or ‘AP1’, go back into pre-flight – a roughly three week process.


Testing on ZY997 - the pacing item for now (Guy Norris)

So let’s look at what that means in terms of potential timing. Boeing isn’t saying too much about the details of the static testing schedule but, depending on how long the results take to be checked and confirmed, we could be looking at pre-flight activity (gauntlet tests) getting underway around the Thanksgiving holiday (Nov 26). If all went well that would shunt the first flight window to approximately the Dec 17-24 period. If more issues crop up the company still has the remaining week in December to achieve its target of flying by year-end. So is this a long-looked for chance for Boeing to finally celebrate the festive season with a first flight, or more likely a major slice of overtime for the Boeing flight test team? Either way there’s a busy December in store for Everett.

Editor's note: Hopefully Guy won't mind as I parachute in here to tip our hats to Aubrey Cohen at Seattle PI and Jon Ostrower for the links. Welcome to visitors from both sites (and hint, hint, once you register, you can comment here too!) -- Chris Fotos, web managing editor