Sorry, Your First 787 Dreamliner Flight Won't Include A Vertical Take-Off
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Once again, the headlines have been going a little crazy
celebrating the latest viral video du jour. This one appears to show
Boeing’s latest 787 Dreamliner making a near-vertical take-off from a
runway in Washington state in a rehearsal for the jet’s appearance at
the Paris Air Show. While the maneuver is impressive, it might not be
quite as extreme as it seems, and it’s not likely you’ll ever get to
experience it as a passenger.
The video that’s been making the rounds this week was posted
to YouTube by Boeing itself on Thursday in advance of the Paris show,
but the company has been coy about the actual angle of ascent, choosing
not to comment to reporters about the video.
There appears to be a trick of perspective happening with the angle of the camera filming the take-off.
“It looks like the takeoff is at a near vertical 90 degree angle — trust me it’s not,”
pilot Patrick Smith of AskThePilot.com told CNN.com.
In this earlier video of a 787 performing the same technical
maneuver, we get a better view of the takeoff and while it clearly
isn’t quite a 90 degree angle, it is still jaw-dropping (and
stomach-quaking) to see something that large go steep so quickly.
If either of these videos make you a little queasy, don’t
fear. This is strictly a stunt; you’ll never take a passenger flight
that starts this way because a key part of the maneuver is for this big
boy to be light as possible.
“Presumably the plane was very light
because it wasn’t carrying any passengers, probably had a very light
fuel load, no freight, so it would have been able to perform a steeper
than normal ascent,” Smith said.
He says the typical pitch-up for a
passenger flight will be under twenty degrees, nothing like what is
shown (or appears to be shown) in the video.
To jack in to my brain and get more on the latest
in science, tech and innovation, follow me here on Forbes, as well as
on Twitter @ericcmack and on Google+.
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