Maiden flight completed by World’s largest twin-engine plane, Boeing 777X

Monday, January 27, 2020

 The biggest twin-engine jet ever built touched down safely after its maiden flight on Saturday, January 25 and made aviation history in the skies of Washington  by the brand-new Boeing 777X. It is designed to carry up to 426 passengers in a two class configuration.

This was ordered by the British Airways as a replacement for the 747 Jumbo.

Due to the adverse winds the maiden take-off from the factory at the Everett Washington State were cancelled on Thursday and then Friday. In order to avoid populated areas the plane needed to take off to the north.

Under the command of chief tests pilots Van Chaney and Craig Bomben, the Flight BOE1 took off at 10.07 am local time on Saturday.

The Boeing 777X flew east and was there in the air for hours, made turns, flew southwest to the Mount Rainier area to do a circuit for publicity photos.

At the Boeing Field in Seattle it finally touched down to rapturous applause from the plane manufacturer’s employees.

At the world’s airports for a quarter century the Boeing 777 has been a familiar sight  and the ‘X’ version is known to have a wider fuselage which has larger engines and wider wings that spans 235 feet.

The 777X has been put in the SuperJumbo category due to the wingspace  in the ICAO code F category. This will significantly restrict the number of airports in which it will be used.

There are retractable wingtips to counter this for taxiing and can be raised to reduce the wingspan to 212 feet which is the same as the current Boeing 777-300.

According to Boeing the new breakthroughs in aerodynamic and engines will help 777X deliver 10 per cent lower fuel use and emission.

There will be 10 per cent lower operating costs than the highly successful Airbus A350.

The Boeing 747 Jumbo jet will be replaced by the plane  which flew half a century of flying between Heathrow and New York this week.

It is expected to fill the gaps in the airline fleets left the Airbus A380 “SuperJumbo” is retired.

In the smaller configuration the 777X is available, the -8X sseating 384, the larger-9 X holding 426.

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