When airplanes fly in the high skies, they often leave cloud-like trails behind. Many think of it as smoke, and some even call them chemical trails. The simple condensation trails look quite fascinating and utterly beautiful if a drawing is made out of them. Boeing decided to pull a sky drawing feat, and they did not pick a circle or a heart to draw. They instead chose to make an airplane shape in the skies.
The mission was planned to be accomplished by a Boeing 787-8 that took off from Seattle on the morning of August 2, flew all across the US along the path carving its own shape in fine details of the fuselage, tail fins, the wings, and the nose. The flight drawing ended 18 hours later, and the plane landed back at the Seattle airport. It sounds all fun until you realize how much carbon dioxide the plane dumps into the atmosphere as exhaust. The 25,400 km (15,800 miles) journey released about 300,000 Kg of carbon dioxide into the air, according to an estimate.
The gif this @BoeingAirplanes 787 drawn with a 787 deserves.
Still in the air at https://t.co/ltUSXWvJ2a pic.twitter.com/FOWMsfqYW1
— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) August 3, 2017
The entire drawing sounds like a publicity stunt but Boeing spokesperson Doug Alder, Jr. gave a reasonable explanation saying it was actually a requirement of regulatory agencies for testing the engine endurance. “Rather than fly in random patterns, the test team got creative and flew a route that outlined a 787-8 in the skies over 22 states,” he said. Sadly, no one actually saw the aircraft trace the path, and the record exists only on websites like FlightAware and FlightRadar24.
This not a new kind of stunt by Boeing. The airplane manufacturer made a Boeing logo in the sky in 2012 with a Dreamliner and then wrote the word MAX in the sky earlier this year with a Boeing 737 MAX.
Flying here and there may sound simple to some but Boeing’s Vice President of Marketing, Randy Tinsmith writes, “This wasn’t a joy ride. It was an 18 hour… flight test for a 787-8 with GE engines. Our team coordinated with the many air traffic control centers, choosing the routing to avoid restricted airspace.”
Do you support this marketing stunt? Let us know in the comments section.