In wee hours of Saturday morning, ZA001 emerged from from the paint hangar with freshly painted body and wings, as well as cleaned fuel tanks.* The aircraft returned to Building 40-24 (767 Line) where it is parked next to WF001, the first 777 Freighter (N5020K), also painted in the Boeing house livery.
Several hours before, the Alenia-fabricated horizontal stabilizer for the first production 787 arrived in Everett from Italy for Dreamliner Seven onboard the LCF. The stabilizer, which is the largest monolithic composite structure on the 787, joins a specially painted blue rudder on the assembly floor. The rudder currently sports a paintjob that would indicate the tail will read 7-8-7, similar to that of Dreamliner One when delivered to ANA.
In the near term, several sources indicate that ZA001 could be on the flight line as early as next week, though the way the time line is structured suggests that the factory gauntlet could actually commence outside of the factory.
The factory gauntlet is first of three stages of closed-loop systems testing that verifies the proper software and hardware functionality of the aircraft. The first phase is run on external and battery power.
*In case you were wondering the 787-8 holds 33,528 gallons of fuel.
This post was originally published to the internet between 2007 and 2012. Links, images, and embedded media from that era may no longer function as intended.
This post originally appeared at Flightglobal.com from 2007 to 2012.