Boeing Test Pilots Are A Creative Lot, See Some Designs They Made

In an unusual stunt, a Boeing plane created an outline of itself in the skies over 22 states in America during a 4,000-mile test flight, inviting appreciation and amusement in equal measure.

After it's 18-hour flight, the pilots of the 787-8 Dreamliner — a long-haul, mid-size wide body, a twin-engine jet airliner — created an outline of their own aircraft that spanned the country from border to border.

"Rather than fly in random patterns, the test team got creative," Boeing said. "The nose of the Dreamliner is pointing at the Puget Sound region, home to Boeing Commercial Airplanes."

The flight-path illustration in the shape of the Dreamliner has wings stretching from Texas to Michigan. The tip of the tail touches Alabama, and the nose is over western Wyoming.

The Dreamliner took off from Boeing’s Seattle headquarters in Washington D.C. on Tuesday, and aviation fanatics were able to track its unusual route as the flight path began to take shape using ‘Flightradar24.’

After taking off, the flight headed east toward Lake Superior and Marquette, Michigan. There it took a more than 180-degree turn that took it back over Beacon, Michigan. Then it changed course again over Paulding, Michigan and began flying southwest. It kept on that course until it was over southeastern South Dakota, where it took an abrupt right. After flying for a bit, it took two lefts and a right.

Eventually the flight path took the crew over 22 states, twisting and turning their way south before reversing and turning back toward the Canadian border.

Interestingly, this is not the first time Boeing pilots have gone creative in the sky during their flights. Pilots take advantage of waypoints and flight paths to spell out certain words or phrases and even draw pictures.

Earlier in February, a Boeing 737-8 MAX took off from the Seattle Boeing Field for a test flight in northwestern United States, and the pilots spelled out “MAX” during the nine-hour flight.

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In 2012, after completing 19 hours of flying the 787 Dreamliner — the longest test flight till date — the test pilots displayed their creative streak to mitigate the tedium of the long flight.

According to reports, the flight plan included more than 140 waypoints, and the pilots not only spelled out "787" across the sky but also managed to add the Boeing logo to it. The sky art stretched from Washington to Iowa.

The words, phrases, and images can be viewed by aircraft manufacturers and by people online, using flight tracking programs such as Flightradar24 and FlightAware.

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However, few estimates revealed that the 787-8’s flight dumped more than 3,00,000 kg of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

The aviation giant got mixed reactions to its stunt on Twitter, with some users gaping in awe and reminiscing about the time it had happened before and others reprimanding Boeing for wasting fuel and causing undue harm to the environment.