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.
This #Dreamliner has been drawing a giant #Dreamliner for 13 hours now!
Live link:https://t.co/ltUSXWvJ2apic.twitter.com/SWe4oaBbqi
— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) August 3, 2017
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.