50億美元的豪賭：打造巨獸波音777的殘酷測試

The Boeing 777's journey from design to reality faced its most critical phase during testing. This was the moment when every system, component, and innovation underwent rigorous scrutiny to ensure the aircraft met the highest standards of safety and performance. From overcoming pressurization challenges to perfecting engine reliability, hunting for crosswinds, and conducting high-speed taxi tests, the 777's development was marked by relentless determination and ingenuity. This video delves into the obstacles, breakthroughs, and teamwork that defined the testing phase leading up to the aircraft's historic first rollout. In the frigid depths of an Alaskan winter, a single component of a new airplane undergoes testing. It's a fuel-related part, largely unknown to most, yet vital to the aircraft's operation. Known as an Auxiliary Power Unit, or APU, it serves as an emergency generator, providing electrical power if one or more engines fail. Engineers from the company developing the APU have traveled 2,500 miles from their homes in Phoenix, Arizona, where temperatures are about 50 degrees Fahrenheit. At any hour, day, or night, Vince Carroll may be called to oversee an engine startup. These startups, triggered randomly by computer, are mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration to ensure the APU starts reliably in extreme weather conditions. To simulate such conditions, the APU is cooled to Alaskan temperatures that sometimes plunge to 59 degrees below zero, with water liberally sprayed over its components. Over six months, the computer has initiated over 500 engine startups. To date, none have failed. The rigorous Alaska testing is just one small part of Boeing's efforts to design and build a new aircraft, the 777. Designed using computers and constructed from the latest lightweight materials, the plane will be powered by two of the world's largest jet engines. If Boeing's predictions are accurate, the 777 will lead a new generation of aircraft designed to meet the evolving air travel demands of the next century. With no signs of halting production, a recent downturn in global aviation has caused cancelled orders and workforce reductions. Shifting travel patterns have led airlines to seek slightly smaller planes capable of flying longer routes. The 777 is Boeing's answer to this demand. Viewed by many as a pivotal project, its success is crucial for the company to However, the development hasn't been inexpensive. While Boeing has not disclosed the exact costs, estimates suggest they will surpass $5 billion. Based on a commitment made to customers years before the 777's existence, Boeing has already sold 147 units at an average price of over $100 million each. This promise guarantees that new design, manufacturing, and testing techniques will deliver a plane ready for immediate service, avoiding the typical year or two of teething issues experienced by some earlier airliners. The head of the 777 project, Alan Mulally, has dedicated the past six years to this aircraft, vowing to achieve what many deem creating a plane safer and more reliable than any in aviation history. If he succeeds, much of the credit will go to a novel management approach called Working Together. Despite its unassuming name, this principle is revolutionary in the aircraft industry. Aiming to eliminate secrecy and rivalry within the company, and even in relationships with some external partners, such as customers and contractors, the 10,000 people working on the 777 are adapting to this bold and sometimes uncomfortable shift from traditional practices. and no limitations in our own minds. And I think the environment we're trying to create is that we'd have a shared thought, a shared vision, a shared appreciation, a shared understanding of what it is we're really going to try to accomplish together. Mulally conveys this philosophy with infectious enthusiasm, though not everyone found it easy to shed egos and openly discuss problems at the project's outset. An engineer with pride wants to find the solution to his problems. And it's not a natural thing to go out and explore publicly the particular problems you have. You'd like to do it and be able to handle those yourself. So I'd say, yeah, there was resistance at first. And I think over the years, that's gone away. I think we kind of shouted from the rooftops in our program reviews with large audiences, in our all-team meetings, it's been said, the same words have been used. It's okay. It's almost like celebrate our problems, get them out in the open so we can go work. Traditionally, challenges in aviation are tackled through relentless testing. All new aircraft must undergo rigorous safety and durability evaluations. But Boeing insists the 777 will set a new benchmark as the most thoroughly tested plane in aviation history. From the structural integrity of individual components to the operation of flight controls, the reliability of electronics and the performance of the entire system, every aspect will be tested and retested. Components, like this passenger door, are tested under the harshest conditions they might encounter during service. Boeing has constructed vast new test facilities specifically for the 777, running flight simulations long before the complete aircraft was assembled. With six months remaining until the scheduled first flight, the test program reached a critical milestone. Okay. I just had a religious experience. Guess where I've been? The airplane? The airplane. And it really happened yesterday. Engineering and operations allowed me to turn on electrical power. And I did it just like the airlines would do it. I went up to the side of the airplane, made sure the big power feeders from ground power were hooked in, that all the lights were on, the polarity was correct. And I went up to the cockpit, and I pushed the battery switch, and then I pushed primary power, then I pushed secondary power. And all the lights in the house came on. Four and a half years after we laid out the program, we turned on electrical power, all the wiring's in, it all works, all the voltages move to the right places, on schedule four and a half years later. Isn't that something? This will be the first 777 to take to the skies. Six other planes identical to it are being assembled in a mile-long production building. However, at present, this aircraft is missing two vital components. Its engines. The 777 is a twin-engine aircraft, like 85% of the planes currently crossing the North Atlantic. Engine manufacturers are racing against time to meet the schedule, despite last-minute design adjustments prompted by six months of rigorous testing. Since the introduction of the four-engine 747, all subsequent Boeing models, including the 757, have featured two engines. For the 777, engines will come from Pratt & Whitney, General Electric, or Rolls-Royce. Twin-engine planes make economic sense for manufacturers today. These engines, accounting for 20% of the plane's total cost, are complex and expensive. However, some pilots, less persuaded by economic arguments and more concerned with safety, still believe that more engines equate to better safety. One Boeing executive, Granville Frazier, a propulsion engineer, provides insight into these debates. Today, manufacturers work to prevent in-flight engine shutdowns by eliminating even minor issues, such as faulty warning lights or loose oil caps, from engine designs. of all of the engine shutdowns in the world, in commercial aviation, have nothing to do with a core engine. They have to do with pneumatic systems or electrical systems or fire detection systems vibrating. And so right out of the analysis came a very obvious issue, and that is that if we could improve their reliability, then you could assure the airlines that they could fly for a long period of time over water up to 180 minutes. The importance of 180 minutes is tied to a set of regulations called ETOPS, Extended Twin Engine Operations. These safety and reliability standards apply to all twin-engine aircraft and have been a key focus for the 777 development team. Airlines must obtain approval from regulatory bodies like the FAA in the United States and the JAA in Europe to operate twin-engine planes more than an hour from a suitable airport. This approval, required in case of an engine failure necessitating an emergency landing, is typically granted only after a new model demonstrates reliable performance for at least a year. Under the one-hour rule, vast areas of the globe are off-limits to twin-engine aircraft, as shown in the dark blue regions on the map. The two-hour rule offers better flexibility, though portions of the Pacific remain inaccessible. However, if twin-engine planes can extend to three hours from the nearest airport, virtually the entire world becomes accessible. To some at Boeing, the one-hour ETOPS rule feels outdated. The original rule in the United States was drafted in 1953, the one-hour restriction, and that rule was based upon the of the piston-engine airplane. The broad spectrum of today's airplanes, and not just ETOPS airplanes, has engines that are at least 10 times more reliable than those engines, and an accident rate related to engines that's at least 60 times better. What one worries about is the dual unrelated failure. In other words, one engine fails and 30 minutes later another engine fails. In the entire history of the Western-built jet transport fleet, from 1959 through today, we have never had a dual unrelated engine failure on a twin-engine airplane, in spite of much higher shutdown rates that engines had prior to the advent of ETOPS. Although European regulators denied the 777 a three-hour ETOPS rating, Alan Mulally remained hopeful about future approval. It is a surprise as such, because we've been talking to them all the way along about the plan, and we know the people involved, and we know how they feel, and we know what their experience is in this area, and so we're really, I think overall, I think we all feel very good about making progress on getting to the place where airplanes don't have time limits on where they can fly. In late 1993, an iconic aircraft, the very first 747, was leased from a museum and fitted with a Pratt & Whitney 777 engine in place of one of its four smaller engines. This modified 747, known as a flying testbed, will test the engine's performance in flight after extensive ground testing. You need to fling one about the sky and have the rotors and the case work their clearances out, and you need to see how the engine's going to operate when you're pulling a rapid wind-up turn or an avoidance maneuver with load, air loads on the fan case, pulling it towards the tips of the fan. So in the past, we've always, in the past, right, in the past, we have always barnstorming, deciding you should go have a flying testbed and take the engine up and fling it around the sky. Well, our design techniques and our test techniques and the facilities that are available to test in simulated facilities are becoming better and better and better. Pratt & Whitney operates an advanced testing facility in Tullahoma, Tennessee, equipped with low-pressure altitude chambers and wind tunnels. These facilities simulate both normal and abnormal flight conditions, allowing jet engines to run at full thrust. For instance, engines must withstand the rare but serious event of a fan blade detaching mid-flight. A synthetic fiber shield is installed to prevent the blade from piercing the engine casing. Engines are also tested against severe environmental challenges, including large chunks of ice, torrential rain equivalent to a 28-inch-per-hour storm, and even bird strikes. Bird ingestion has caused crashes in the past, so engineers launch dead birds at the engine, progressing to specimens weighing up to eight pounds. Despite the thoroughness of ground tests, a lingering question remains. Can ground testing fully replace the insights gained from actual flight testing? Over recent years, debate has grown within Boeing and among engine manufacturers about the necessity of a flying testbed. Could some of the more intricate engine tests simply wait until the plane itself was complete? One key consideration is cost. Ground testing is significantly cheaper, though some Boeing engineers felt the added expense of a flying testbed was justified. If Boeing and Pratt or any engine manufacturer decided to split the cost like they've always done in the past, nobody would be arguing about this one. And the thing you're missing is you can get the altitude facility, you can get the sea-level static facility, you can get the operating lines, you can get everything, but you're never going to get what that 27-degree angle of attack rotation puts a distortion to the family. Does it get a mode of flutter which we don't know? It's not going to get the case deflection, it's not going to get the strut wing interaction. John Cashman, the chief test pilot for the 777, strongly supports testing engines both in the air and on the ground. The more interesting testing is where you're doing the outside corners of the envelope, so to speak, because you're loading the engine to very high power and taking it to very critical airflow angles to the inlet. And at that point, it's somewhat unknown exactly what it will do. The air engine has never been there before. In putting that in a ground simulation, they do do work to simulate it, but they can't quite get it the same as you can in flight. And the events that can happen when the airflow separates off the front of the engine and goes into the engine can make the engine be very unhappy. It can bang and what we call surging, where the blades of the engine basically separate and the engine fires forward. I would, from my own standpoint, have been ready to make the decision to go to the Tullahoma Tunnel without the back-to-back test on the airplane. There were people who were not willing to do that. Those people happened to be in a position to make the final decision, and I wasn't. In contrast, Ron Ostrowski, the 777 director of engineering, was more inclined to rely solely on laboratory testing. To be quite honest with you, I recommended we were ready to do that. Now, in hindsight, I had a lot of advice from others, and it was good advice. We all listened, and we all talked about it, and we decided, well, you know, it's a big development program, and it's a big change, so why don't we go check it out on the airplane, and then we'll validate that correlation between the ground facility and the flight test. And if it turns out that it really is, we really do understand it from the ground facility, then we won't fly subsequent engines, you know, on flying testbeds. So I think both people will be right, kind of, and we'll learn a little bit, but I think most of the knowledge will have known, you know, from the ground testing. The flying testbed program launched in November 1993, and on the third flight, Cashman's concerns about a potential engine surge proved prophetic. It's a very large explosion that you hear. It's like a shotgun going off. Usually there's a motion in the airplane where the airplane will turn slightly into the engine that surges. I think after the second surge, the crew pulled the engine back to idle, and it surged, I think, in the process of that, and then it stabilized. They did not shut the engine down. It recovered on its own. It's kind of like an engine backfiring, which was a gift, which was good news. It was a good piece of data. And the following analysis of the engine and looking at the test data we gathered, we realized that the case that surrounds the fan blades needed to be a little stiffer because it was moving a little bit more than what we had in the design, and that allowed a little bit too much clearance between the tip of the fan blades and the case, which allowed the fan blades to stall just like an airfoil. So it was just stalling. It was at a stall point because it had a little bit too much space. For Mullally and his team, an issue encountered during this phase is seen as an opportunity to prevent more serious problems later. The surge led to several weeks of intensive work focusing on redesigning the engine's compressor case. So I think it's a perfect example of include all the lessons learned, do the best design you can, but then comprehensively test it on the ground, in the test facilities, then comprehensively test on the airplane, and learn from the data, and then be able to deliver an even better quality engine. I think Pratt is really pleased with the engine now, and I think the airlines feel real good about it. And I know that we, the Boeing company, feel real good about the quality of the Pratt engine now, and we feel really good that we went through this design and validation program together. We had not tested for that specific condition at the point we flew on the 747. It was part of our program to do later, but we had not accomplished that specific test condition with an engine that had the configuration that we were flying, and we got a surprise. We learned something, and if you don't learn, particularly if you don't learn and file it away for the future, then you're not doing the job. And we did learn something, and we've accommodated it both in the way we test and also in our configuration. Ultimately, the debate over the necessity of a flying test bed boils down to finely balanced arguments. The ground tests had revealed the surge when the engine was later evaluated under conditions identical to the third takeoff. However, the situation was complicated by the fact that the test engine had endured significant wear during earlier ground testing. Eventually, the engine design passed the critical evaluations necessary for certification on the 777. Examining a single test highlights the complexity and frustration involved, as engineers verify whether their theoretical calculations match real-world performance. For instance, planes sometimes must taxi and take off in crosswinds, strong winds blowing across the engine inlet. If the design isn't optimal, the airflow can become turbulent and separate, reducing efficiency. The most effective way to test this is under actual crosswind conditions, when they can be found. In November 1993, just before Thanksgiving, the flight test team convened to determine if any location in the United States had sufficiently strong winds for this specific test. Some of the weather data they're predicting tomorrow is when they really expect the winds to hit. They're expecting 15 to 25 miles per hour, which translates into the low 20 knots. I guess as much as you can mail down a meteorologist, they have a fairly high confidence that there's going to be the predicted winds tomorrow. The question is, is it close enough to make it worth launching and expending all of the effort and budget to go based on those forecast winds? I mean, that's the nature of this, isn't it? It's a turkey shoot and we've got so many windows of opportunity. I'm inclined to believe we go for it, but wasn't there estimates that the winds were likely to peak tomorrow afternoon? Yeah. So we could be in place in time to support that. Yeah, if we left tomorrow morning, I think, right? Well, it's the last shot before the holiday. Well, what else are you going to do tonight? The next morning, a flight crew and engineers boarded the plane to go crosswind hunting. Personally, from a gut feel, I would put it at 50% at best. If the weather does come through it predicted and we can get over 20 knot winds, then hopefully we can get inlet separation. You know, the goal is to have 25 knot winds, but anything we've made the commitment to anything over 20 knots will go for it. Right now, the airplane's looking in good shape. The engine's looking in good shape. We've got the facilities lined up. All of that had to come together in about two hours time and we've gotten past that. So really, I think our only remaining constraint now is hoping that mother nature is going to cooperate. Programs in the past have set six months waiting for weather like this to give this kind of testing and we're on our second day. So it's rather optimistic that we can knock it off on our second day. As winds in Wichita began to intensify, the team expressed a strong desire to start testing immediately rather than waiting another day. If the winds are still increasing, on like in the next hour by the time we can get Vance here and get the wind station off, I'd recommend that we tow in position and set up the wind station. The engine was covered in sensors to measure airflow at various points around the fan, but with winds only reaching 15 to 20 knots, the conditions were not ideal for testing. The team set up a wind gauge to determine the best direction for the plane to face until the engineers decided the wind speed was strong enough. After some deliberation, they decided to proceed and the engine was started, running at a thrust of 90,000 pounds. That night, the winds calmed and it seemed they would remain quiet, at least in Kansas. The Boeing team returned home empty-handed for Thanksgiving, having spent nearly $10,000 on the trip. After several more attempts, they eventually found the required crosswinds two weeks later in Montana. The test was successfully completed. As the first flight of the 777 rapidly approached, pressure mounted on the team to deliver the redesigned engines. They were working under a management system called Just-In-Time, where parts were scheduled for delivery only when needed, not before. Rocky Thomas at Boeing began to feel anxious. Hello, Tom Davenport. Tom Davenport, this is Rocky for 8 O'Clock Poco. I guess I'm still struggling with the lateness of some of the blades, vanes, and the turbines and clusters. The schedules of Just-In-Time, and what we're going to have to do is work on a daily basis with those parts that have the possibility of jeopardizing our schedule. But you're right to be concerned about it, because we are as well. And Just-In-Time is wonderful, as long as it shows up just in time. Yeah, that's right. Just-In-Time when it's not in time is just ----. What Rocky needed to know is how we were doing with the testing of the first engine. And I had to tell him that we weren't doing as well as we had hoped, and that Rocky expected. And he then has to mull that over and decide how he wants to play that message to the Boeing organization. And what I really asked for was a little time to see how we do this afternoon, now that I've taken some action. Rocky will learn interference, and hopefully this afternoon when we have a phone call, wrap it all up for the day, I can give him some good news rather than bad news. Situations like this would really put the working-together philosophy to the test. Even though we have a very good relationship with Pratt and with United and ANA and the rest of the people on the team, that doesn't mean that everything's always rosy and you get along and you just sit in a room and make things happen. There's certainly been a... I've had a lot of frustration with Pratt and some of the schedules that they haven't met, and that frustration comes out. My wife and I are absolutely, totally in love and we have a superb relationship, and that doesn't stop her from yelling at me every once in a while. While the engines had consumed much of the attention, the rest of the plane also needed testing in the months leading up to the first flight. On this particular night, the fuselage is being pressurized for the first time. When a plane flies at cruising altitude, the air outside is much lower in pressure than the air inside the cabin. To replicate the pressure difference on the ground, engineers can't lower the pressure around the plane, so they increase the pressure inside, inflating the plane like a balloon. The plane must withstand a pressure difference of more than 12 pounds per square inch, over two tons of outward force, on a 777 window, and even more on the door. We start out at five pounds psi is what we go to, it's a preliminary check. Then we'll come down, we'll let people out of the airplane at that point, and then we'll go up to 12.1, which is our proof test. 12.1 psi, that's per square inch, you got to realize. You may see some leaks around doors, things like that. They're audible, very audible, they're leaking. You'll hear them. If you have a head cold, anything like that, do not enter the airplane. Anything like that. On the way up to pressure, clear your ears like this, chew gum, whatever you need, your ears will pop. If we start going up and your ears do not pop, let us know on the radio, we'll bring it down and let you out. We don't want your ears ringing in there. No earplugs at all. It may be noisy, but do not wear earplugs. Okay, we go to 12.1, I want everybody in the 26 building, I don't want them over here on this beam. Okay, now we got sound directors in, do you know? Not that I'm aware of. Okay, FAA is here, social justice coordination. They want us to do that. They come in, they got to stand by until we're ready. Okay, so we're ready to go, right? Yes. Okay, go ahead, Errol, take her off. Everything holds up under five pounds per square inch, but as the pressure is raised toward the maximum expected pressure difference of 12.1 pounds per square inch. That's a good sign. No plastic blowing. 131 back there. It will time to five minutes. At 12 pounds per square inch, a seal on the rear door blows out. There we go. We're going to try to get to 12.1 and hold. Okay, we know we're going to try to get the proof and hold it. The engineers continue pumping air in, hoping to maintain the target pressure, known as the proof pressure. I don't know. We're talking about it. Can't hold it. Okay, we're not going to hold proof. We're dropping it. Drop her, Errol. We're real close, you know, real close. The airplane is climbing up. We're climbing a little bit. How high? We're only going a thousand feet per minute, but we're at 12.0. If this starts moving out here, I mean, it's just going to erode it, and it can rotate at this point. Right, and then it's just pushing it out here. Yeah, at a certain pressure, it'll just block out. What I'm saying, either way, it's going to rotate around this point here. Let's go up and take a look. Yeah. Let's go up and take a look and see what we got. I don't think that's going to work. I really don't. It's going to rotate around that point there. What we're going to do is we're going to fill this space so the seal has nowhere to go. With what? With Tigon tubing. It'll be trapped by the skin, and it'll have nowhere to go. Okay, straight break. The goal now is to create a temporary seal for the door using sticky tape and tubing so that the rest of the plane can be fully pressurized. The makeshift fix worked, and later that night, the plane was repressurized and reached the proof pressure without any leaks. The test result was another gift, to use Alan Mullally's words. The door designers identified the weak point in the complex silicon rubber seal and redesigned it. Every new plane eventually reaches the moment when it's ready to be revealed to the world. This event is called the rollout. Off to the rollout we go. Get in the back. Get in the back. Glenda Barnes applies sealing compound around the inside of the 777's fuel tanks. She, her husband, and her father have been invited to the rollout ceremony alongside a hundred thousand other Boeing employees. Alan Mullally and several Boeing executives will address the crowds 15 times throughout the day. Every hour, another 7,000 people are brought by bus to the factory. Welcome to the working together celebration. We thank you for coming and sharing this day with us. The 777 is the seven all-new Boeing jetliner. You actually go on at four minutes to the hour. Right. And then we'd like, uh, if you can come close to finishing right on the hour, that helps us out a lot. The ceremony is built around a video sound and light show, leading up to the moment when the plane is unveiled. I guess they're just going to show what the films and then, what they're going to show here, just the films, and then you go to another area. Ain't no sense in going into the crowd. I don't know what you do. Among those sharing the spotlight with Mullally is Boeing President Phil Condit. Good morning and welcome to the Boeing Celebration. My name is Alan Mullally. I'm the Vice President and General Manager. This beautiful airplane comes with a list of new achievements for Boeing. Now, are you ready? It's going to make your eyes water. Enjoy yourself. I got born fever. Time to go, got born fever now. I got born fever. This beginning, father, has me taking more than I can make to give this celebration. Father, I need you to give me something. Into the land that you've worked so hard to bring this sad, sad, sad flight, a spade right here, a Boeing 777, over three million parts flying in tight operation, have you all worked together just like, come on, and take a minute out in the air quick, and see how well together. From a distance, the 777 may seem deceptively small, but up close, it is truly impressive. The 777 is nearly as wide as a 747, and only 20 feet shorter. I feel we do this, like, from the SOB, which is the side of the body of the plane, which is here, all the way out to where we're going. Inside the barracks, see those holes that's underneath there? They just look like holes. Go in and out of those. Seal up down the wing of it. That's the excess hole. No, you just have a radio with you. The sealers go in and out of there. See, it's hard to get in there, and sometimes it's hard to get out, because those are small holes. That's the first thing I looked at when they undid the curtains, was the lenses. I wanted to see exactly what they looked like. To just imagine all the stuff that they've done inside of there. I think the expression sort of is, oh, wow, and you can't help but get tears in your eyes. Everybody I've talked to had the same reaction. Ah, get in their eyes. But everything is. It's a real draining experience to build an airplane, so I think everyone is ready now. We're ready to go fly it. So today, it was thrilling having worked on the airplane since the start, to see this all culminate here. I was thinking, as it will be at the beginning of June, when we see the airplane lift off, it'll be a big relief. When we see it land, it'll be a bigger relief. Late that night, the first 777 exits the hangar for its true rollout, witnessed by just a handful of workers. Over the next two months, the plane will be fueled, and all its major systems will undergo one final round of ground testing. If all goes well, it will be ready to fly. The first 777 is now only days away from its first flight. The interior has been filled with banks of test equipment, needed once the test engineers are allowed aboard. Though that won't happen for several weeks. During the initial flights, only the pilot and co-pilot will be on board. Nothing is left to chance. Although this plane has been tested inside and out, the two-person crew will wear parachutes, ready to bail out through a specially designed emergency door if anything goes wrong. But before the plane can take off, it must first be able to taxi. That's what's happening today, after the massive cleanup of the taxiway is completed. Today, the plane will taxi down the runway, approaching takeoff speed, and then apply the brakes. It's a prelude to tomorrow's event, the first flight. But as the engines begin to turn, a problem arises. The source of the leakage is found. A small rubber O-ring had been pinched at the junction point, leaving a gap for hydraulic fluid to escape. The engines are restarted, and the crew goes through their final checks. Under its own power, the first 777 makes a swift right turn and heads toward the runway. These taxi tests are designed to check the landing gear, brake heating, and overall stability of the plane. John Cashman will take the plane up to 140 knots, lifting the nose off the ground. Any faster, and it would take off, but that will have to wait until tomorrow. However, during the high-speed taxi, a surprise occurs. Some observers suspect that all the wheels are actually off the ground at the fastest point of the taxi, as the first flight happens a day early. After one more taxi, the team meets for debriefing. Forty-six after high-speed taxi brakes had noticeable vibration just prior to stop, when using light braking. This was noticed on first taxi also. Call that one an engineering item too, I guess, because we don't necessarily want anybody to do anything on it tonight. No, this happens every time you get probably above three to four. It's kind of a grindy low groan just before you stop. Okay, thank you everybody. It was a good test. Thank you very much. I think we're there. We can't test any more on the ground. On the morning of June 12, 1994, the world's press gathers at the Boeing plant. VIPs, including Boeing Chief Executive Frank Schrantz, await the announcement of the final takeoff time. Thirty-five feet with 15-knot tailwind. Those are the numbers. During the flight, the Boeing telemetry room maintains constant contact with the plane. That's lovely. Yeah, is that good? Okay, fantastic. It works, huh? Yeah, I might go walk out. Just don't leave me. Well, is that probably a better place, isn't it? Okay, what's coming next? Let's go. We're almost at the limit on the tailwind. We're starting the engine. These engines are just performing better than everybody expected, so usually we'd have to turn the airplane around, you know, and have the engine blow into it. And Kenny and Todd said, no problem. It starts right up. Yeah, it's a good start. Oh, my God. What a deal. Did you think it was raining? The first 777 test flight lasted nearly four hours, with only three minor issues identified. Apart from that, the flight was flawless. Two months later, Alan Mulally was promoted to a more senior role within the company. Many more months of testing lie ahead for this plane, and others like it. Finally, passenger flights are scheduled to begin.