I Love Planes » First Flight

Fifth Boeing 787 Dreamliner Takes Its First Flight

Rafael — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 01:55:35 +0000

The fifth plane in the fleet, known as ZA005, the first powered by the new GEnx engines, took it’s first flight today from Paine Field. The coolest thing about this event, is that I got to watch it in real time thanks to a real time Qik feed from Airline Reporter.

Sure, it was a little small when I was watching it live, but here’s the full size, HD quality video that Airline Reporter shot:

GE and Boeing expect that the first of the GEnx powered Dreamliners will be delivered in mid 2011. Boeing will make 2 engine options available for the 787 Dreamliner, one option will be to have the plane powered by the Rolls Royce Trent 1000 engines and the other option is to have power by the new GEnx engines.

GE says that its engines are 30% quieter than the Rolls Royce ones. The GE engines are also the first to have the front fan case and fan blades made of carbon fiber composites. By the way, the fan case and fan blades are made “down the street” from me in San Marcos, TX at C-fan.

Here’s some footage from the King 5 TV channel helicopter of ZA005 taking off on its maiden flight.

I’m still amazed by how much the wings bend on take off. It’s truly a beautiful plane.

Hawaiian Airlines Takes Delivery Of Their First Airbus A330-200

Rafael — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 01:58:53 +0000

First Hawaiian Airlines Airbus A330-200 landing after first flight, originally uploaded by Curufinwe Xiane.

Hawaiian Airlines has received their first Airbus A330-200. Until today, Hawaiian Airlines flew an all Boeing fleet.

Hawaiian has a total of 10 A330-200s on order, 3 of them will be leased from CIT, including the one that they received today. The other two leased units will arrive in May and November of this year respectively.

There are also six A350-800s on order. Airbus will deliver the first of the “owned” A330-200s in 2011 and the first of the A350s is scheduled to arrive in 2017.

(Seattle PI)

Special SXSWi edition Sunday Wings: Antonov An-225 Mriya

Rafael — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 13:35:14 +0000

My goodness, there’s really only one way to describe this plane:

This thing is big.

Here it is on final approach to Sao Paolo, from Houston, TX. This was this plane’s first flight to Brazil.

Photo Credit: Tales De Lass Graciano

Despite it’s enormous size, it’s still a pretty plane.

Photo Credit: Marcelo F. Di Biasi

I wonder how it handles?

Boeing 787 Dreamliner

Rafael — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 16:15:02 +0000

This is an awesome photo of the 787 Dreamliner on the tarmac after its maiden flight. I bet lots of people breathed a huge sigh of relief that the plane had a successful first flight.

Airbus A400M First Flight Video

Rafael — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 16:00:40 +0000

Here’s video from the first flight of the Airbus A400M. It’s a military cargo plane that looks suspiciously like a C-130 Hercules, but that’s a story for another day. Enjoy the video:

The first flight took place in November, and I apparently, was asleep at the wheel for it. In any case, here’s some video of it for your enjoyment.