Everything went quiet in the factory here in Renton, starting at about 10:00. All the big screen monitors were tuned in to the same site:
The live broadcast of the 787 Dreamliner, set to take off on it's first flight.
There had to be a lot of sweaty palms and tightened sphincters around Boeing. This had been a long and difficult birthing. It had already caused several careers to flame out. It had cost a huge pile of money and resources. It had tried the patience of stockholders, corporate officers, and the work force. It had cost the image of The Boeing Company to take several hits to it's credibility.
Things had started out so spectacularly. The competition didn't have a ready answer to a light, versatile, fuel efficient people mover. Sales went through the roof, anticipation built, the stock went up and up and up.
It didn't take too long to show the near fatal flaws in the business model. No one had tried to put together an aircraft in quite this way. State of the art all composit construction divided among several stake holders, to be assembled somewhere else. Admittedly, the bottom line looked like an Ebebezer Scrooge wet dream, but was built on such a happy path plan, that it couls not succeed as planned. A product of this complexity could not be initiated by multiple stakeholders in multiple countries and assembled. The basic rules of Chaos Theory warn us that complex systems accumulate error probabilities in a way that makes first try success impossible.
As the assembly completion and first flight dates slid further and further to the right, it became all too clear that the business plan was flawed. Boeing's reputation has always been that if they promised something, they delivered. It now became a minefield of delays and excuses. The stock fell, Heads rolled, the stock fell.
But today, for one all too brief moment, all of that became past history. All of the false starts and disappointments became part of the past. It flies.
Oh, it's not done with yet. There are still lots of things to iron out in the assembly process, the supplire chain, and the final design. But the first major milestone has been passed.
BUT IT FLIES!
6 comments:
Congrats to you and all the REAL people who made this happen. She flew over my house on the way out.
Rick: Nothing quite like watching a first-of-a-model take off on it's first flight.
Huzzah! Congrats to all you people who worked on it!
But the real question is, did she land? After all, flying is the second best thing, landing is the first. :)
Sarah: They wandered around in the sky for about five hours, and landedn safely. Tomorrow I will have to look up the flight report. As far as the landing goes, you know what they say "Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing."
Yay! Isn't it nice to see all your hard work pay off?
Sue it's not so much the first flight that floats my boat. That will come when they actually deliver the first one.
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