VALPARAISO, FL — January 2014: A 787 spends the night at a remote parking stand at a Canadian airport following a 14-hour flight from Asia. The composite jetliner waited in the bitter cold for its return to the gate in preparation for its next trip across the planet. After soaking in the sub-zero temperatures during the long winter night, the aircraft is returned to the gate and to defrost before its next departure.
While this is a moment in the not-so-distant future, Boeing is ensuring that their customers will be able to thaw out and cool off the 787 when it is handed over to ANA later this year.
It’s almost as if the aircraft was painted for the occasion. The icy white and blue “light” flight test colors stood out against the frozen surroundings of the McKinley Climatic Laboratory at Eglin Air Force Base in Valparaiso, Florida.
Boeing’s third 787 test aircraft, ZA003, arrived in Florida on April 18 after a five-hour, 2000nm trip from its home base at Boeing Field in Seattle, the longest point-to-point flight undertaken by the new aircraft to date. Ninety-eight people were onboard the aircraft during its flight, including Tom Sanderson, Boeing’s ZA003 flight test director.
After being de-fueled, ZA003 was brought inside the C-5 Galaxy-sized hangar on April 19th, and the testing got underway on April 20th heading into the first round of cold soak that began at a temperature of -15F. A second round followed on April 22nd, subjecting the airframe to -45F, moving later to a two-phase hot soak, with temperatures of 90F and 115F.
MUCH MORE BELOW THE FOLD
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This post originally appeared at Flightglobal.com from 2007 to 2012.