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Drawing a giant 747 flight plan in the sky

Randy Tinseth, the Vice President, Marketing for Boeing Commercial Airplanes and the blogger behind Randy’s Journal, has written about the recent final day of flight testing for the 747-8 Freighter. One of the two airplanes that flew drew up a giant 747 across the continental USA sky in a 17 hour endurance flight over some 15 states. Below is the actual 8,119nm flight plan from FlightAware:

SEA J70 MLP J36 GTF HLN DLN TWF PARZZ MVA MQO MVA PARZZ Q121 TOUGH DIK RAP J157 BFF HGO TCC VANSS TCC HGO BFF J157 RAP DIK J36 FAR J140 DLH J21 ICT SPS ICT J21 DLH J140 FAR DIK BFF PARZZ TWF DLN HLN GTF J36 MLP J136 GEG GANGS KPAE

Randy has pointed out that the 747-8 Freighter has already flown more than 1,200 flights and 3,400 hours since its maiden flight back in February of 2010.

Tough times for aircraft makers…

In these tough economic times, the Onion has recently reported that Boeing has laid off the only guy who knows how to keep wings on an aircraft:

Boeing Lays Off Only Guy Who Knows How To Keep Wings On Plane
CHICAGO—With the airline industry continuing to suffer under the ongoing recession, the Boeing Company was forced Monday to lay off Al Freedman, the only guy left at the corporation who knows how to keep wings from falling off planes. "We used to have a whole team of engineers who knew how to make the wings stay on, but those days are long gone," Boeing CEO James McNerney, Jr. said. "We’ll make it work, though. The wings are not necessarily the most important part of the plane, anyway." McNerney added that at least they were able to save the job of the guy who knows how to prevent jet engines from exploding.

Boeing Skyhome

For some people a Boeing Business Jet is the ultimate status symbol, for others it is a business tool but for a few it is nothing less than a second home. Boeing realised that wealthy individuals and corporate CEOs who spend months each year travelling could use the space offered by the BBJ, a converted 737 airliner, to create a flying home-away-from-home.

[Read more…] about Boeing Skyhome