Boeing's 787 Dreamliner Completes Successful First Flight

In spite of clouds, rain, ice and turbulence that would normally scrub a First Flight, Boeing decided to make a statement about their confidence in the 787 - a statement designed to defuse the perception that the Dreamliner program is in trouble and likely to stay that way.

Pending a thorough review of the engineering data, it appears they were successful and then some.

From the moment of lift off from Paine Field, the airport adjacent to the sprawling Boeing factory in Everett, WA, until the picture perfect landing three hours and four minutes later, the flight was anomaly free.

"We encountered icing and turbulence - which weren't on the task list - but there were no problems," according to Randy Neville, Engineering Test Pilot for the 787 program. 

Mike Carriker, chief pilot for the program, said "The engineers said we'd have a great airplane and we do."

The first Dreamliner to fly has three names: ZA001, the inventory designator, AP1 - short for Airplane Number 1, and N787BA, the FAA registration number. It will never be delivered to a customer and is one of six aircraft dedicated to the testing program.

AP1 has no passenger seats or any interior finishing. Instead, the payload consists of rack after rack of test equipment interfaced to provide over 1,000 telemetry channels of data. At the other end of the data-link, engineers watch in real time and archive all data for later examination.

The telemetry system, extensive though it may be, was only operating at 1/10^th capacity during the First Flight. Later flights will see more channels of data collected as the Dreamliner goes through a nine month certification process that culminates with the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) permission to build and sell the airliner.

First Flight Objectives
With two T-33 military jet trainers flying chase, Boeing 1, the Dreamliner's Air Traffic Control call-sign, lifted off Paine Field's runway 34 Left at 10:29 PST on Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2009. And for the next three hours, it flew a zigzag path above the Straits of Juan de Fuca at altitudes ranging from 2,500 to 13,000 ft as the First Flight objectives were ticked off the task list one by one.

Seen on a radar screen, the path resembled the flight of a Honeybee foraging for nectar but it was data that Carriker and Neville were seeking.

The most critical data were validations of the aerodynamic qualities the designer's equations had predicted. Especially important were tests for any sign of flutter. (Aerodynamic flutter is a harmonic condition that appears at specific speeds and/or flight control settings. It can destroy the surface in question and result in the loss of the aircraft.)

Also important were the low speed stability tests since demons lurking there can cause all sorts of handling problems. For instance, an airplane that's unstable at low speeds will be a handful to take off and land. It would also be an aircraft that few test pilots would want to be in when the high speed stability predictions are validated.

For most of the flight, the landing gear was extended and the flaps were left set at the 20 degree take-off position. Later, the gear was cycled and the flaps were extended to 30 degrees which more closely approximated the landing position.

Airspeed was kept intentionally slow at approximately 160 knots and rates of climb and descent were both kept at or below 1,000 ft/min. In addition, bank angles and pitch changes were held to low values to provide a base line of stress levels for later testing.

Engine operation, flight instrumentation and critical systems all performed as predicted according to the flight crew who said that the airplane appeared to have no bad habits.

Flight control harmony - the way that various controls work together - particularly impressed Carriker. "I told the engineering folks back at flight ops that they had gotten it just right," he said.

Since the 787 is a Fly-by-Wire airplane, his accolades also meant that artificially generated force feedback present in the controls provided the "feel" of a conventional airplane but with the precision of computer assisted flight controls.

Neville echoed Carriker's assessment: "It brings back the joy of aviation because the airplane flies beautifully. It became second nature (to hand fly) very quickly," he said. Both Neville and Carriker think the airplane flies better then the simulator.

A neutral observer expects company test pilots to not dwell on any shortcomings but reporters asked more then once if there were any surprises or problems and both pilots gave straight forward answers that left very little wiggle room. 

Neville said, "No surprises - in spite of very high benchmarks. It responded just as we expected."

"We've shown that the airplane flies today and in the next nine months we'll show it meets all the design goals. We had a great day." Carriker commented.

The Path to Certification
Now the tedious work of testing the airplane begins. Exploration of the entire flight envelope will require most of 2010 and the majority of that work will be done by test pilots who are also engineers. Along the way they'll be required to fly precisely, holding airspeeds and altitudes within limits far tighter than an airline pilot is required to exhibit.

Being engineers, the public will view them as automatons programmed by the great engineer in the sky to do a job without emotion. But once and awhile, an engineer will break free and experience something like what Mike Carriker did shortly after taking off on the First Flight:

"We climbed to 2500 feet initially and stayed below the clouds until we were out over The Straits of Juan de Fuca and then we started climbing. At 7,000 we popped out and there was the snow capped Olympics framed in the left window. I'll never forget that sight the rest of my life."

John Loughmiller is an electrical engineer, commercial pilot, flight instructor and a lead safety team representative for the FAA.