First Flight for Line 1463

Line 1463 (RC604) VQ-BRH for AirBridgeCargo just took off for the first time. She's currently unpainted. This will be the second frame ready to deliver for ABC, as line 1430 already sits finished and waiting to be taken home.

An interesting article on 747-8 status was posted on Flight Global. Read it here. Things of note:

• Boeing is looking to cut 5000 lbs from future frames.
• Engine improvements of 1.6% fuel burn, 4% additional thrust.
• FMC updates and aerodynamic improvements.

Boeing says real world fuel burn is already 1% better than forecast. They're going to start a new major test flight program for the above items, as well as the tail fuel tank, in 2013, which should be complete by the end of the year. I wonder if they'll use new frames for this test, or possibly the old Atlas NTU frames and Lufthansa line 1435 (which would explain the rumored delivery delay to 2015).

Line 1420 for Cargolux (City of Vianden) returned painted from Portland a couple days ago. This is a beautiful pic by Russell Hill:

Anyone know where Cargolux line 1465 is? She's been missing from the last few flight line pictures.

Already delivered line 1449 A7-HJA for BBJ customer Qatar flew from Kansas to France after finishing her Aeroloft cabin install. There she will finish off her VIP cabin installation. Here she is landing at Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg airport.

Here are some pics of line 1463's taxi run, daring escape from the runway just prior to an early landing of a LAN 787, and eventual B1 takeoff. Here she is preparing for taxi test.

Just off the runway after taxi test, less than a minute later LAN 787 line 80 CC-BBC returns from a B1 cut short for some reason.

Immediately back onto the runway for takeoff.

When things finally get going, they can really move fast at KPAE.