In what was supposed to be a routine test to check the endurance level of the new Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 TEN engine, the test pilots of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner took a creative path to break the monotony.
During the extended operations or ETOPS testing of 787’s Trent engine, the pilots flew the plane 39,000 feet above the United States and did not just fly around in a straight path but traced a route in the shape of the Dreamliner.
It took the pilots, who started on Wednesday, over 18 hours to draw the shape of the plane across 22 states using a GPS tracker.
“The nose of the Dreamliner is pointing at the Puget Sound region, home to Boeing Commercial Airplanes. The wings stretch from northern Michigan near the Canadian border to southern Texas. The tail touches Huntsville, Alabama,” Boeing spokesperson Doug Alder, Jr, said in an email to The Washington Post.
{{/usCountry}}“The nose of the Dreamliner is pointing at the Puget Sound region, home to Boeing Commercial Airplanes. The wings stretch from northern Michigan near the Canadian border to southern Texas. The tail touches Huntsville, Alabama,” Boeing spokesperson Doug Alder, Jr, said in an email to The Washington Post.
{{/usCountry}}The Post reported Boeing has got creative on mandatory test flights for new planes before. Earlier this year, pilots testing a new Boeing 737 MAX plane flew more than 3,400 miles to write “MAX” over Washington state and Montana.
The Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engine will power Boeing 787 Dreamliners and the test was done to check whether the plane can safely operate on one engine for an extended period of time.
ETOPS regulations allow airlines to operate extended flights over remote areas that were not previously possible.