737 MAX 9<\/a> — completed its inaugural flight this month, landing at Boeing Field south of Seattle after lifting off 2 hours, 42 minutes earlier from nearby Renton Field into partly cloudy skies.<\/p>\n“I’ve been on the program since the very beginning,” said Tracy Russell, a procurement agent for 737 MAX fuselages, “and watching the suppliers and us all come together to get the MAX out flying is just amazing.”<\/p>\n
Tom Duval-Wilkinson, a Lean practitioner who works to streamline the MAX build process, said, “It came together well, it is designed well, and the whole team came together and got it flying.”<\/p>\n
Piloted by Capt. Christine Walsh and Capt. Ed Wilson, the airplane took off at 10:52 a.m. Pacific time from Renton, near the factory where employees assembled the airplane. It landed at Boeing Field at 1:34 p.m.<\/p>\n
First flight is the latest step in the airplane’s thorough flight-test program, which will be followed by first delivery in 2018.<\/p>\n
On first flight, teams performed tests on flight controls, systems and handling qualities. The 737 MAX 9 will now undergo comprehensive flight testing before customer deliveries start in 2018.<\/p>\n
Veronica Wipp of 737 MAX business operations, who was on hand for the takeoff, said, “This airplane is fuel-efficient, beautiful inside and out, and customers are going to love it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Puget Sound-made 737 MAX 9 completes successful first flight<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":534,"featured_media":19444,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.redmond-reporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19443"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.redmond-reporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.redmond-reporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.redmond-reporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.redmond-reporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.redmond-reporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.redmond-reporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.redmond-reporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.redmond-reporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.redmond-reporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19443"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.redmond-reporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=19443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}