Unfortunately all of his old Boeing cronies are long gone, so we didn’t get the VIP treatment, just the regular tour that’s open to the public. While we waited for the tour to start, we looked around the state-of-the-art Future of Flight center, which had interactive plane design software, full-scale replicas of the engines, and even a 727 cockpit (fun for kids of all ages!).
Captain Kevin – Don’t call him “Shirley”.
The tour took us inside the main assembly building, the world’s largest building if you measure by volume. It’s so large you could actually fit all of California’s Disneyland inside it, with room to spare for parking!
They didn’t allow cameras or phones inside the building, but we did see some cool planes parked outside. This oddly-shaped one is the Dream Lifter – one of four modified 747’s that were built to carry the parts for the new 787. Parts for the 787 are sourced from all over the world, and each section of the plane (flight deck, tail, fuselage, etc) is pre-assembled elsewhere and transported in a huge chunk to the plant here for final assembly. You can see the tail is hinged like a door to allow them to load up the enormous cargo.
We also had a chance to see some of the unpainted 747’s sitting out on the tarmac. The green color is a protective coating that they wash off before they give the plane the final paint job.
As I mentioned, we weren’t able to bring our own cameras into the assembly building, but I did find some photos on the web. This is pretty much what the inside of the plant looks like. Here’s a 777 being assembled. It was pretty cool to see them assembling one of the planes that Kevin was involved with!
Photo courtesy of johnnyjet.com
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