747-8 flies

Boeing's giant 747-8 freighter is the biggest plane the Boeing company has ever built, It took off on its first flight today which is a year later than originally planned and one day earlier than the anniversary of the first flight of a 747 41 years ago. The 747-8F took off from Everett's Paine Field at 12:39 PST and Touched down at 4:18 PM.

The 747-8 Freighter reached a speed of 230 knots (264 mph/426 kph) and an altitude of 17,000 feet (5,181 meters) on the first flight. It is about 5.5 meters longer than the existing 747-400 jumbo jet. The company conducted high and low speed taxi tests on the freighter on Saturday, with the aircraft performing well.

At this stage there are 76 firm orders for the freighter and 32 for the 747-8 inter-continental passenger jet which was launched on November 14, 2005, Boeing has firm orders for 10 planes from Cargolux of Luxembourg and eight from Nippon Cargo Airlines of Japan and has a list price of more than $US300 million.

After completing the test program, the first freighter will be refitted and delivered to Cargolux later this year. The first delivery was to have been in late 2009 and the first passenger version in late 2010, but Boeing pushed back the dates due to design changes, limited engineering resources and an eight-week strike that shut down factories.

The 747-8 passenger version will carry up to 467 people in three classes, with a range of just under 7,000 miles and assembly of that plane will begin around mid-2010, with the first delivery in the fourth quarter of 2011.