777-200LR Flight Test Journal: Archives
10 August 2005
Showing off at Seafair
Frank Santoni
Chief Program Pilot, Boeing 777
I'm the Chief Program Pilot for the 777, but on this program Capt. Suzanna Darcy-Hennemann is the lead project pilot for the 777-200LR Worldliner. This past weekend, however, I was in the pilot's seat to show off WD001, the first Worldliner, to a couple hundred thousand people during the Seafair Air Show in Seattle.
During the flyover of Lake Washington, I had to remind myself to look down occasionally to see the crowd. We were flying low, it was a beautiful day and, believe it or not - even with that big a crowd - we can't hear anything from the ground in the cockpit.
This picture should give you an idea of how low we were actually flying during Seattle's Seafair over the weekend.
I've done a number of air show flyovers in the past, but this was my first at Seafair. Not so for my co-pilot, Capt. Paul Stemmer, who has several of these under his belt. The flight was enjoyable, but over in a hurry. It's always nice to be able to show off a great product like this, and even more so in front of a crowd that included so many Boeing people.
The flight was approximately 45 minutes. We took off from Boeing Field and then established an orbit over Lake Sammamish and waited for our time to show. We had to wait for the air show controllers to ensure the I-90 bridge and course were clear.
The planning and logistics for these kinds of flights take a lot longer than the flights themselves. After we're approached by an organization like Seafair, we first have to determine if we have the time in the flight test program. After all, this airplane is in the middle of a pretty rigorous program and our schedule is pretty tight. After agreeing to take part in Seafair, we started meeting with all the pertinent organizations -- the FAA, local air traffic controllers and others to map everything out and establish things like altitude limits and weather contingencies. We also met with all the other participants in the air show and decided who needed to be where and when.
Once that was decided, I mapped out our flight plans (we needed to have a couple in case of low cloud cover). There are a couple things we have to be wary of in this type of situation. The first is light airplane traffic. During an air show, we are in an environment where big planes don't spend much time. Once we made our pass, we quickly turned downwind for a landing at Boeing Field. We needed to land prior to the Blue Angels taking off.
Suzanna and I at the Edwards Air Force Base in California, about 90 miles north of Los Angeles.
We also have to be cautious of all the systems on a 777 that are designed to detect an unusual flight pattern -- and will want to do something about it. For instance, when the plane notices that we are flying below 500 feet, the airplane systems will sense the gear is not down and give us warnings. So, we had to do some things to fool the system into thinking we were at a different altitude. On this particular flight, we did a good job of catching everything. There have been times when we missed something and an indicator went off in the middle of the flight.
Like all the 777 models, this one has performed great throughout the flight test program. It's hard to say that this one has performed any better than its predecessors, because they have all performed exceptionally well. That, in itself, is a testament to all the people who work on these great products.