With just 24 hours go before Qantas take delivery of their first ever Dreamliner 787/9 from the Boeing factory in Seattle, the buzz is building.
I’m writing this in Seattle, where I’m with the Qantas team and some very excited fellow media and TV crews from Australia, who have all been lucky enough to be invited over to fly on the inaugural flight to Sydney, departing Seattle on Tuesday afternoon (Pacific time).
But first up, Qantas CEO Alan Joyce and the team will literally be ‘picking up the keys’ to the plane tomorrow (Monday) in a special delivery ceremony out at the Boeing Factory. Yes, just like cars – planes have keys too, though apparently they are more for show than actual use.
The freshly painted new Qantas 787/9 Dreamliner
I have to say I’m actually rather curious to know if there’ll also be a big red bow and some balloons on the front of the plane like you get at a dealership when you buy a new car? A true “Oh what a feeling!” moment? We will see.
Tomorrow we’ll also find out the name of the first plane (and who won the competition to name it) as well as grab our first opportunity to jump onboard and experience those amazing new seats for ourselves briefly, before we depart on it the following day from Boeing’s Everett Airport at the factory just outside of Seattle.
The Dreamliner ‘Business Suite’ Seat
The aptly coded flight ‘QF7879’ (with only us onboard as passengers) will leave Everett Airport at 1200 (Pacific Time) on Tuesday, bound for Honolulu where we’ll then say ‘Aloha’ to a 24 hour media stop and no doubt a few celebratory Mai Tai’s.
We’ll then depart Hawaii on Wednesday evening, landing in Sydney on Friday morning at around 0710 to be welcomed by the traditional water cannons and around 1800 very proud Qantas staff and media in a special hangar event at Sydney Airport.
Qantas Captain Lisa Norman, One of the inaugural flight pilots at the Boeing factory
During a visit to the incredible Boeing (and very Lego like) factory this morning, where all of Boeing’s aircraft are built, we also got to see the second Qantas Dreamliner 787/9 in production, which although still in pieces right now, will incredibly be delivered in just a few weeks.
The Boeing factory is an absolute must visit if you are coming to Seattle and runs daily tours of its ‘Future of Flight’ program as well as gives you the privilege of seeing these big birds being assembled for yourself.
Nerdy fact #1: It takes just 15 days for the Boeing Dreamliner 787/9 team to assemble an aircraft from start to finish before the plane goes off to be painted and tested to fly. Remarkably, most aircraft only take two or three test flights before being delivered thanks to phenomenal next generation technology utilised to build and test the planes in Seattle.
Nerdy fact #2: At a whopping 1,025 acres in size (That’s around 75 football fields), the Boeing factory is the largest manufacturing building in the world as recognised by Guinness Book of World Records and includes 20,000 parking spots and 33,500 employees.
Nerdy fact #3: The factory uses one million light bulbs. Replacing them is actually someone’s full-time job.
More from the factory floor…
All up, a total of eight, shiny new 787/9 Dreamliner’s will be delivered from the Boeing factory to Qantas between now and the end of 2018, with the Melbourne-Los Angeles route beginning in October 2017 and the history making Perth to London direct ‘Kangaroo Route’ starting in March 2018.
The remaining four new Dreamliner 787/9’s will be based in Brisbane with their routes still yet to be announced, though cities in the U.S. and Canada such as Chicago, Seattle and Vancouver have all been tipped unofficially as potential new destinations, along with Brazil and Cape Town.
Qantas has also confirmed that its 787/9 Dreamliner’s will only carry 236 passengers, as opposed to the majority of other airlines that seat 300+, which will give their fliers more space to stretch out on longer sectors such as the seventeen-hour direct Perth-London flight.
We’re literally now into the final countdown for the first Qantas Dreamliner delivery, which given that the project has been 10-years in the making, is about to put some very big smiles on the faces of not just Qantas themselves, but Australians everywhere.
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