777-200LR Flight Test Journal: Archives

16 August 2005

No vacation for flight test

Joe Kranak

Chief Engineer, Test and Validation, 747, 767, 777

For many people, August is a time when the weather heats up and activity slows down. Friends and neighbors are squeezing in that last week of summer vacation before schools and other activities kick back into gear. For flight test, it’s just the opposite.

August has seen a significant jump in activity as we’ve added two new programs to our already crowded calendar. In addition to the 777 200LR Worldliner certification program, we’ve added the Quiet Technology Demonstrator (QTD2) test program and the 777 300ER Enhanced test program. Testing on the QTD2 is taking place in Glasgow, Montana and, after its first flight, the 777-300ER Enhanced test airplane joined the two 777 200LR Worldliners at Boeing Field in Seattle.

We’ve also had some recent events that have created challenges for us:

• WD002’s arrival in London coincided with the July 7 terrorist attacks there. During the chaos, we lost contact with several of our crew members who were meeting the plane in London. They remained “lost” for a portion of the day as local communication and transportation systems were disrupted. Thankfully, the “lost” were eventually located with the help of pagers, e-mail and good old fashioned “leg work” and were eventually reunited with the team.
• Unavoidable contact between a red-tailed hawk and WD001 occurred a couple weeks ago while both were on final approach to Grant County Airport in Moses Lake, Washington. Although, of greater consequence to the hawk, the event caused us to put the aircraft in a brief lay-up while repairs to an engine inlet were completed.
• A popular summertime celebration in the Seattle area is Seafair – highlighted by appearances by the U.S. Navy Blue Angels aerial demonstration team. The Blue Angles practiced and performed their demonstration program over the course of four consecutive days. As one might expect, airspace use was greatly restricted during their flights.

In spite of all this, the 777-200LR test program remains on schedule, and as of last week the two aircrafts had accumulated 614 flight hours during 221 individual flights. We’ve responded to the unplanned events by increasing our operational cadence. In addition to flying WD001 on weekends from time to time, we’ve also been able to schedule two flight blocks a day when necessary. The coordinated efforts of the test and flight operations teams along with their flight test manufacturing counterparts have allowed us to achieve the operational efficiencies necessary to stay on plan.

However, there may still be some “turbulence” in our future. Experience tells us that when we enter “crunch time,” a few key tests can greatly affect our ability to remain on plan. Two of these are “auto-lands” and “VMCA” (minimum controllable velocity – air). Of the remaining demonstrations required by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) as conditions of certification, these are two of the most significant.

“Auto-lands,” or landing a commercial aircraft under the sole authority of the autopilot is not a new capability. Every new aircraft model must demonstrate that its airframe, autopilot and flight controls can perform accurately even at the most extreme corners of the envelope. These “corners” are characterized by adverse wind conditions from all quarters relative to the direction of landing, headwinds, tailwinds and crosswinds.

Here is the potential for “turbulence.” Only Mother Nature dictates when she will make these conditions available to us. As we work through our backlog of certification testing, we are also constantly on a “wind watch.” That means we are ready to deploy immediately to locations as far away as Iceland if the proper weather is forecast. Day or night, we’ve got to be ready.

We expect WD001, the fully instrumented airplane that has been carrying out the majority of the certification testing, to complete its testing in late September - “wind watches” not withstanding. WD002, which sports a custom interior and auxiliary fuel tanks, should complete its testing late this month.

Before I close, I’d also like to take a moment and reflect on the recent deaths of two of our colleagues. Kevin “Doc” Dukes and Chun Kit “Jack” Ho were members of our flight test engineering team. They died in the crash of their small plane earlier this month while on a training flight in the vicinity the municipal airport in Renton, Washington. Everyone on our team has been deeply affected by their loss. Our thoughts and prayers go out to their families and friends.