Passengers like cheap flights. Airlines like lower fuel bills. It’s those two considerations that helped give wing to the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner, a globe-trotting twinjet that’s now in operational service with ANA, the craft’s launch customer.
Seems the airplane just set a couple of speed and distance records for airplanes in its weight class. That matters too, because fliers like to stop and change planes as seldom as possible, and once in the air they like to get to their destination as fast as possible – regardless of how enticing the in-flight amenities.
“Speed and distance capabilities are fundamental to the value the 787 brings to the market,” says Scott Fancher, the 787 program’s vice president and general manager. “These records are a great way to demonstrate that this airplane is the game-changer we promised.”
The “game-changer”—even though it’s years late entering service—racked up some amazing numbers on a recent flight from Seattle. It flew 10,710 nautical miles nonstop to Dhaka, Bangladesh. The old record-holder was an Airbus A330, another twinjet. It flew 9,127 nautical miles nonstop.
After a two-hour refueling rest in Dhaka, the Dreamliner headed back to Seattle on a 9,734-nautical mile journey, thus setting an eastbound around-the-world speed record of 42 hours and 27 minutes. There were no such around-the-world record for aircraft in the “seven-eights” weight class.
To be fair about all this Boeing points out that there were only 13 people on board the aircraft at the time it set these records. The Boeing 787-8 can carry as between 210 and 250 passengers when it’s fitted out in a three-class configuration. All those people, and their bags, would have cut the distance the airplane could have flown nonstop.
What’s the longest distance you’ve ever flown nonstop? Name the cities.
Story by Jerry Chandler
(Image: Boeing)
