FlightBlogger Archive 2007-2012

Roadtrip! 787 heading for Victorville this week

Written by

Jon Ostrower

in

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The second 787 test aircraft (ZA002) is leaving the nest as early as Tuesday, headed to Southern California Logistics Airport in Victorville, California about 50mi outside of Los Angeles. This will be the first out of state trip for 787 Flight Test after more than two and a half months of testing at airports in Washington. 

FlightBlogger imageZA002 is expected to make a mid-morning arrival on Tuesday in Victorville after a little over three hour flight from Boeing Field. The 15,059ft runway at VCV is ideal for flight test as it provides a lot of margin for test pilots and is the second largest public-use runway in the US after Denver International Airport. During their time in California, flight test staff will be working out of a quadruple-wide trailer relocated from the local City Hall.
Victorville is also the home to a large aircraft boneyard, as the final resting place for the fleets of defunct airlines like Oasis, Silverjet, Aloha, Cargo B and Aladia, as well as a lot of former Delta L-1011s.

Occupancy at Victorville went up significantly in the last two years with older aircraft coming out of service from airlines like United, Singapore Airlines, British Airways and Cathay Pacific.

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.

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