Boeing

A Boeing Dreamliner Drew an Enormous Outline of Itself Above the U.S.

By Kevin Lui
A 787 Dreamliner passenger jet lands dur
A 787 Dreamliner lands at Paine Field in Everett, Washington, March 20, 2011.
Mark Ralston—AFP/Getty Images

It can’t get more meta than this: a plane drawing the outline of itself in the sky with its own flight path.

That’s what the crew behind the controls of a Boeing (BA) 787 Dreamliner did during an 18-hour endurance test overnight Wednesday. Flight tracking sites such as FlightAware show the jet’s path resembled the outline of a 787 above 22 U.S. states.

“With time to spare in the air,” the testers “got creative” with their flight path, the Chicago-based plane maker said on its website. Eighteen hours of flight time theoretically covers the distance between Singapore and San Francisco, or Perth and London.

The plane’s wings spread from the north of Michigan to southern Texas, and Boeing said the nose of the outline has a meaning: it’s “pointing at the Puget Sound region, home to Boeing Commercial Airplanes,” according to the company’s website.

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According to tracking service FlightRadar24, which first hinted at the jet’s sky art in a tweet Wednesday, the 18-hour, 9,905-mile flight was used to test new Rolls-Royce engines that will power the 787-10, a stretched variant of the Dreamliner.

This wasn’t the first time Boeing pilots have gotten creative with endurance tests. In February, a crew drew the word “MAX” during a 737 MAX test flight over the northern U.S.