SEATTLE – The weather was lousy and they didn't get to fly as long or as far as they'd planned, but the two pilots at the controls of Boeing's 787 Dreamliner during its maiden flight called it a wild success.

Boeing test pilots Mike Carriker and Randy Neville spent three hours putting the 787 through its paces Tuesday, flying several laps around the Puget Sound area at altitudes as great as 15,000 feet. The flight was a key milestone for the 787 Dreamliner, which delays and setbacks have pushed more than two years behind schedule. The plane took to the air for the first time six years after the Boeing board greenlighted the project. It's the first jetliner to use composite construction and all-electric systems.

The flight generated vast amounts of data for the flight-test program, which Boeing must work double-time to finish if it is to meet its goal of delivering the first 787 to Japan's All Nippon Airways in nine months. And though happy to have the first flight behind him, Carriker had no sooner stepped off the plane when he said he was eager to get back in the air

"Is it a relief? Yes," he said of completing the inaugural flight. "Would I like to go get another 20,000 pounds of gas and good weather and go again? You bet I would ... make that about 80,000 pounds of gas."

He and Neville will have plenty of chances to fly the 787. Boeing's got about 3,000 hours of tests ahead of it.

Boeing brought in two of its best for the 787's first flight. Carriker is chief pilot on the 787 program and was a Navy pilot before joining Boeing in 1990. He's made more than 300 carrier landings flying the A-7E Corsair and F/A-18 Hornet. In addition to flying the 787, Carriker was a chief test pilot on the 737 program and the assistant project pilot on the X-32 Joint Strike Fighter program when Boeing was competing for the contract. He also is checked out in the 1933 Boeing 247D, the company’s first all-metal airliner.

Air Force veteran Randy Neville flew in right seat for the first flight. Neville spent 20 years flying F-106 Delta Darts and F-16 Fighting Falcons. He is a graduate of the USAF Test Pilot school and went on to weapons testing in the F-4 and F-16. Neville also flew the F-22 Raptor while at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

Yesterday’s flight lasted a little more than three hours after being cut short because of deteriorating weather. Powered by two Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines, this was the first 787 off the assembly line, serial number ZA001. There will be five more 787s used in the flight test program over the next seven to eight months including two powered by General Electric GEnx engines.

Carriker says after Saturday’s taxi tests, they were ready to fly.

“We had the 5 degrees nose up on Satuday during taxi tests," he said. "So we know the airplane wanted to fly, it was tired of being on the ground.”

The weather wasn’t great in the morning. Clouds were between 4,500 and 5,000 feet and there was some strong winds aloft. The original flight plan called for flying to eastern Washington. But when another Boeing pilot in a T-38 chase plane found foul weather during a weather reconnaissance flight, Boeing opted for "Plan B" and a flight over the Puget Sound region.

Just after 10 a.m., ZA001 pulled out of its parking spot on the flight line at Paine Field not far from where it was assembled in the massive Boeing factory. After a short back taxi down the runway and a few minutes going over final systems checks, Carriker and Neville lined up ZA001 on runway 34L as the thousands watched in anticipation.

At 10:27, the call was heard on the radio: “Ready, steady, now.” And with Carriker pshed the throttles forward and the 787 accelerated down the runway with two T-33s flying just above. Once airborne, Carriker leveled off at about 2,500 feet to avoid going into the clouds. They wanted to perform some instrument checks before flying in the clouds by instrument flight rules. After performing the checks and receiving clearance from air traffic control, Carriker said everything looked good and made a call to engineers on the ground saying they were ready to start the first flight test.

“I called the telemetry and said, ‘Hey TM, I can control my bank angle, I can control my heading, I can control my pitch attitude, I can control my velocity along my vector, we are good to fly," Carriker recounted after the flight.

ZA001 landing at Boeing Field

And with that, Carriker and Neville proceeded to fly for the next three hours completing several laps over a relatively cloudless area in the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains northwest of Seattle.

“We popped out of the top of the clouds at about 7,000 feet and there was the snow-capped Olympics, the Straits of San Juan, all framed in the front left window of a 787 at 10,000 feet” Carriker said. “That image will be in my mind for the rest of my life.”

Lousy weather forced them to fly short legs, turning about every 15 minutes. It wasn't what they'd planned.

“We took off with a very, very, very aggressive plan,” Carriker said. “We were going to take off and fly for five and a half hours and do many, many points that actually count for the final, the final score, the final certification of the airplane. And we achieved about half of those.”

Neville said the test points were fairly straight forward, with no unusual maneuvers or surprises.

“We took off with flaps 20 [degrees], the normal take off setting and we stayed there for quite a ways. We were at flaps 20 for the bulk of the mission, that was with the gear down,” he said of the early part of the flight. “We ultimately got to flaps 30, we cycled the landing gear, that was a big point we wanted to do. We brought the gear up then we both breathed a big sigh of relief when we put it back down and it came down properly.”

Because of the small region of clear weather and the need to make numerous turns during the shortened flight, the pilots couldn't achieve the speed they wanted to. Much of the flight was spent at around 160 knots (184 mph), according to Neville. They flew to a maximum altitude of 15,000 feet.

As you can imagine, the test flight generated as much interest in the air as it did on the ground. Carriker says it was great fun talking other pilots who were in the region who were curious to know if the plane's unusual call sign, ‘Boeing 001,’ meant the 787 was flying.

“Everybody wanted to know if the Dreamliner was airborne and it was really cool to say, ‘You bet, we are airborne today,’” he said.

787 Program Manger Scott Fancher with Test Pilots Randy Neville and Mike Carriker

Eventually it was time to land at Boeing Field in Seattle where ZA001 will be based during the continued flight testing. Weather at the airport was worse than at Paine Field and the crew flew an instrument approach known as an ILS onto runway 13R in wet conditions.

“We even got to do a functional check of the windshield wipers coming back here,” Carriker said with a smile.

As is the case with any pilot, even the chief test pilot of the 787 liked to point out the good ending to his flight.

“I thought the landing was pretty good,” Carriker said. “It doesn’t count how well you fly the airplane up and down Straits of San Juan, it only counts how well you land it.”

Boeing says there will be more than 3,000 flight test hours flown before the 787 is certified by the Federal Aviation Administration. The first of 840 pre orders for the mostly composite airliner should start late in 2010 if all goes according to the current plan.

The crew says the flight test schedule will be the same as it was before, though some of the venues might change.

“We thought we were going to do icing tests in December, and now we’re probably going to do icing tests in July,” Carriker said referring to the previous schedule, which had the first flight slated for last June. “Which means we’re probably going someplace in South America. But that’s about it, we’re not changing the plan. We think it’s going to be about seven or eight months.”

The crew said the next flight for ZA001 should come in about a week once more instrumentation is added.

Air-to-air photos: Boeing. All others: Jason Paur / Wired.com

See Also:

Chief Test Pilot Mike Carriker gives the thumbs up after successful first flight of the 787

ZA001 taxis to the press conference after landing at Boeing Field