The first Boeing 777 Freighter successfully took to the sky for the first time on July 14th and completed an initial series of tests during a flight lasting more than three-and-a-half hours. The airplane performed well. “The 777 Freighter completed the scheduled three-hour inaugural flight with no airplane performance-related issues,” said Dennis O’Donoghue, vice president of Flight Operations, Test & Validation. “The only issue was a data-communication problem between the airplane and the telemetry room at Boeing Field.”
Boeing will identify and fix the problem to resume the flight test program as soon as possible. Due to the data-transmission issue, the 777 Freighter was unable to complete all of the first-flight tests and was returned to Paine Field in Everett, Wash. per Federal Aviation Administration procedure. The original first-flight plan called for a landing at Boeing Field.
