Boeing 747-8 was scheduled for its maiden voyage on Monday 10:00 am PST. That time is past by 1 ½ hours. But it is still to take off. Recent news informs that the giant freighter’s first flight is put on hold due to unfavorable weather.
With the apparent demise of the short-range 787-3 looming large, Boeing says a medium-range Dreamliner is not on the cards, but it envisages its future 737 successor plans to include a replacement for the 757.
Boeing has targeted 8 February for the maiden flight of its 747-8 Freighter, one day shy of the 41st anniversary of the type’s first first in 1969.
Air cargo carrier FedEx has revealed renderings of how one if its first Boeing 777F freighters will look when it departs the US for China on a special mission the morning of 4 February.
As Boeing pushes through flight test on its flagship development programme, the company says it plans to have more than 30 Boeing 787s at various stages of completion by year’s end.
Boeing is in final preparations for the first flight of the 747-8 Freighter which will flown by 747 chief pilot Mark Feuerstein and the senior test pilot Tom Imrich.
The FAA is now saying that “passenger networking may result in security vulnerabilities” exposing flight systems to hackers.
Boeing says it remains on track for first flight of its 747-8 Freighter “early in 2010″ as it outlines it plans for the flight-test program to bring the new jumbo to market by the fourth quarter of this year.
Boeing reached 90 percent design for the passenger version of its 747-8 this week, Randy Tinseth, vice president of marketing for Boeing Commercial Airplanes, wrote Thursday. “One of the great stories here is that we reached this important point a week and a half ahead of the plan we laid out a year ago for the program,” Tinseth wrote.
Boeing on the evening of 17 November moved the first 747-8F from the paint hanger in Everett, Washington with a special “light” livery. … The airframer explains the light livery saves time and expense compared with the full Boeing livery, and will remain on the aircraft until the flight test program is completed.
