The headline in the local newspaper pushed under the hotel door in the morning proclaimed “Seattle to reach 100 degrees today”…. it was going to be a warm one. Looking down the city temperature list, Miami 90, Washington, 83, Houston 90, Boston 78.
Future of Flight
We were off to Boeing’s factory and Future of Flight exhibition in Everett. It was a 40 minute drive from the centre of Seattle out to the plant, and even this early in the morning we were grateful for air conditioning. The bus dropped us off right out side the Future of Flight building and even the 100 metre walk from the bus to the air conditioned entrance was a shock, the temperature was already in the high 90’s and it wasn’t 10 o’clock yet! We had tickets fort he factory tour, so we did not have long to wait. The first thing we had to do was rent lockers to dump all out phones, cameras, ipods… in fact anything electrical. That was a disappointment, as I hoped to take some photos of the 787 Dreamliner in production.
The tour started with a short drive across the airfield to where Boeing had its main production facility. The building doesn’t actually look that big, untill you start to get closer to it. There is little to scale the building against, except aircraft. The main building is around 11 stories high and each of the hanger bay doors is the same size as an American Football field. In fact the whole building was the single biggest enclosed volume in the world…. it was HUGE even by American standards. The guide we had, Christopher, was entertaining and had an ability to impart information but not sound as though he was just throwing facts at you. I have the feeling he enjoyed his job, and he was passionate about Boeing.
I could not take photos inside the production facility, but here are a few of the facility itself….
Looking across the field to the two paint spraying buildings
The main production building
The first three bays were built to house 747 production, the next three bays were added later for the 767 and now 787 production
Inside the Future of Flight building
After finishing our tour of the Boeing facility, we headed off on the bus a couple of miles to the other end of the field, to see a special private collection of aircraft. These were all owned by Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft. All were kept in a flying condition or being restored to a flying condition.
I’ll leave you with a few photos I took….
OK, thats it for now…. and for the record, the temperature reached 103 degrees in Seattle, a new record!
Resume own navigation and watch for traffic.
S
