How the 'Dream' was born

Published in the Seattle P-I June 29, 2007

By JAMES WALLACE
P-I REPORTER

On the afternoon of July 8, 2007, a date chosen for its special sequence of numbers, The Boeing Co. will show the world for the first time a commercial passenger plane three years in development and much longer in the planning, a new kind of superefficient jet for the 21st century that some have described as a game changer.

The 787 Dreamliner will be the world's first large commercial jetliner with an airframe made of carbon fiber composite rather than aluminum. It will give passengers a much-improved flying experience while saving airlines money on fuel and maintenance.

And for the company that Bill Boeing founded in Seattle in 1916, the 787 represents a comeback, a return to those heady days when it was known for blazing aviation trails through the skies with pioneering jets that started with the 707 at the dawn of the Jet Age.

The concept of what would become the 787 was born in the engineering halls and offices of Boeing's hush-hush product development group. But this story of the Dreamliner's birth begins with three men and a large silver suitcase.

The decision by Boeing's board in December 2003 to back development of the 787 came one day shy of the 100th anniversary of the first powered airplane flight by the Wright brothers.

It was not so long ago that critics were writing off Boeing, suggesting the once-great aerospace giant might want to exit the commercial airplane business because it seemed to be floundering and had lost its focus, allowing upstart rival Airbus in Europe to set the pace and gain the upper hand.

But even as those critics were ridiculing what they called Boeing's "Derivatives 'R' Us" jetliner strategy, some of Boeing's brightest in commercial airplanes were quietly exploring radical new ways to use the latest technology in a passenger plane that would be unlike any that had flown before.

	Gillette

"This is the first new airplane for the second century of flight," said Walt Gillette, one of Boeing's legendary engineers and aerodynamicists who was vice president of 787 development and production until he retired last year. "The Airbus A380 is the last embodiment of the first century of flight."

On a March day in 2001, Boeing executives Alan Mulally, Mike Bair and John Roundhill boarded a Challenger 604 business jet waiting for them at Boeing Field and, with a shiny new silver suitcase safely stored, relaxed in the plush seats as the jet took off and headed east over the Cascade Mountains.

	Mulally

Mulally had led the team that developed Boeing's previous all-new jet in the early 1990s. The 777 was a big success, and Mulally was now president of Boeing Commercial Airplanes.

Bair was a rising star there, the vice president of business strategy and marketing. He would later lead the 787 program.

The soft-spoken but brilliant Roundhill was the leader of the 20XX product development group, which for several years had been preparing for what might come after the 777. The group had been looking at everything from radical new aircraft designs to revolutionary manufacturing processes that would dramatically lower production costs for Boeing. Some of its preliminary aircraft designs were code-named for national parks.

	Roundhill

"When the stars align, it's a really big deal; it only happens once in a while," Roundhill would say later about the timing of an all-new jetliner program. At Boeing, it had only happened seven times in half a century, the last when engineers and executives were considering what changes and improvements could be made to the 767 to meet market demand for a bigger plane. From those discussions, the 777 was born. Roundhill was chief engineer for the 777's preliminary design and configuration.

Suitcase contents revealed

	Bair

By 2001, six years after the 777 entered service with United Airlines, the stars appeared ready to align again and it was time to show potential customers what was in the silver suitcase. During a three-week road trip that March, Mulally, Bair and Roundhill took their top-secret luggage to airlines in North America, Asia and Europe. One of the first stops the Challenger jet made was Houston, Texas, home of Continental Airlines. Gordon Bethune, Continental's chief executive, knew a thing or two about Boeing and its airplanes. He had once run Boeing's 737 and 757 jetliner business in Renton.

When Mulally, Roundhill and Bair showed up at Continental's downtown office building, Bethune met with them in the boardroom on the 19th floor. After non-disclosure agreements were signed, the suitcase was opened and out came a 3-foot-long scale model of a sleek, futuristic-looking jet -- code-named Glacier -- with a delta wing near its tail, two engines blended into the back of the wing and smaller winglike canards near the nose. The Sonic Cruiser, the Boeing executives explained to Bethune, would be able to carry passengers around Mach .98, or nearly the speed of sound, but with the same efficiency as current jetliners.

The Sonic Cruiser would go about 15 percent faster than the 777, but burn only about the same amount of fuel per seat -- an unheard of accomplishment given the laws of aerodynamics.

The look of the Sonic Cruiser, and what it would be able to do, took Bethune's breath away.

"It gave me renewed confidence the old Boeing was back," said Bethune, now retired from Continental.

That old Boeing was not afraid to take risks. It had once gambled its future on the massive 747. But the Boeing of 2001 was being criticized by some for caring more about shareholder returns than taking bold initiatives like those under way by Airbus, which was spending more than $10 billion to develop an all-new super jumbo, the A380. Instead, Boeing had been focused on less risky and less costly derivative planes.

In 1996, Boeing had considered a more capable 747 that would have been about 30 percent bigger than the existing jumbo. The 747-500/600 program, however, was short-lived. The market was not ready, and the project was dropped. Even so, Boeing continued to work on advanced electronics, aerodynamics and systems for a future plane, and also on composite technology with NASA and others.

Gillette, one of the company's best engineering minds in commercial airplanes, had led the work on the 747-500/600.

In 2000, Boeing had a second go at improving its jumbo jet and formed a 747X team led by Gillette. This plane would have been only about 17 percent bigger than the existing 747-400. But by March 2001, when Mulally, Bair and Roundhill set off to tell airlines about the Sonic Cruiser, Boeing had not landed a single order for the 747X.

On March 29, 2001, only days after Bair, Roundhill and Mulally returned from their road show, Boeing publicly revealed that it had stopped work on the 747X to focus on the superfast Sonic Cruiser.

"Let no improvement in flying pass us by," Mulally told a Seattle news conference, borrowing a line from the company's founder.

Developing Sonic Cruiser

When the 747X project was halted, Gillette was put in charge of developing the Sonic Cruiser. For some time, he had been helping Boeing get ready for that day when it would start to develop an all-new plane, whatever that plane might be. In early 1997, a Boeing group headed by Gillette -- known by the drab name of Airplane Creational Process Strategy Team -- had started looking at the substantial process improvement that would be needed to build a new airplane. They found ways to cut cycle times (the time it takes to manufacture a plane once assembly begins) and improve engineering design tools as well as the manufacturing process.

Gillette's group became part of Boeing's new airplane product development team, which changed its name to 20XX -- a new name for a new millennium.

And a new plane.

"We had this great technology and the company had the capital to make a substantial investment, and it was looking like the midsize (airliner) market was really growing," Gillette said. That market was served by Boeing's 767 and the Airbus A330, planes that carried about 230 to 250 or more passengers in three classes. The bigger 777 carried upward of 300 passengers.

The Sonic Cruiser would have fit in that midsize market.

Its sleek and futuristic shape -- and speed -- quickly captured the aviation world's imagination in 2001.

But what if Boeing took the technology for the Sonic Cruiser and put it on a plane that would cruise at the same speed as the 777 and 747, or about Mach .85?

Boeing had already done the backroom calculations. Such a midsize plane would be at least 20 percent more fuel efficient than the 767.

Dubbed Yellowstone, it would come to be known as the 787. It looked nothing like the Sonic Cruiser, but they were born together, from the same mother and father. The groundbreaking work that Boeing had already started to do even before 2001 for its next new jet paved the way for the 787, from the Dreamliner's composite airframe and more electric architecture to the revolutionary way it would be manufactured.

Although Boeing was publicly talking in 2001 about developing the Sonic Cruiser, potential customers also were briefed about the slower plane and how efficient it could be. Boeing called this its "reference" plane.

Airlines eventually would have to make a choice -- speed or efficiency.

Boeing selects partners

Meanwhile, Boeing had been setting the stage for a dramatic change in the way it made airplanes, with partners taking on a much larger role. Starting in mid-2000, Gillette and his team traveled the globe, talking with companies big and small. Were they interested in joining Boeing on a new airplane program? What would they provide? What intellectual and financial capital would they contribute?

"Spring training had started, and they had to show us everything, including their secret pitch," Gillette said.

"We would tell them that we had a vision of a suite of technologies that will make a dramatic step forward for our industry. We have a vision for a new organizational plan and a business plan. And it's not going to be like anything we have ever done before."

Boeing started selecting this new team of partners and suppliers long before it had decided on what the new plane should be.

"It didn't matter whether it was the Sonic Cruiser or the Dreamliner, whether it was in aerodynamics, systems or propulsion, it didn't matter," Gillette said.

Toward the end of 2002, Boeing started hearing answers from airlines about the value of speed.

"We had been telling the airlines all along what the technology could do," Gillette said, "and giving them a choice between going faster at today's efficiency or at today's speed with much greater efficiency."

On Oct. 26, 2002, Boeing held a meeting at the Bell Harbor International Conference Center on Seattle's waterfront with a number of airlines. These annual sit-down sessions with the airlines had started a couple of years earlier with the 747X program.

After the main conference broke up into smaller working groups, Gillette and Roundhill met with about a dozen of the global airlines that were most closely involved with Boeing in the Sonic Cruiser program. Each had sent a couple of their best strategic thinkers to the meeting.

On a white board, Gillette drew a graph. The horizontal axis was range and the vertical axis was payload, or passenger count.

"So we asked them, 'What do you really want?' " Gillette recalled.

"Here were these strategic thinkers and they were in front of their competitors, and everyone went to the board and said what their airline really needed. They each drew different dots in terms of range, seat count and speed. That was the final piece of data that Boeing needed." It would now be up to Boeing, and Boeing alone, to decide what direction to go -- speed or efficiency.

Gillette said it might have been the best meeting he ever attended in his four-decade career at Boeing.

"Rarely is there one single meeting where you get such a big piece of input," he said. "That was the most important meeting I participated in that led to offering of what became the Dreamliner."

Some of those airlines that drew dots on the board wanted a plane even faster than the Mach .98 Sonic Cruiser. Some wanted a plane that would only go about Mach .80.

But most of the dots fell in an area that would be covered by a family of planes now known as the Dreamliner -- the short-range 787-3, the long-range 787-8 and the bigger 787-9.

Two months after that meeting, Mulally announced at a news conference from the same Bell Harbor center that Boeing would focus on developing a Mach .85 "superefficient" jet and not the Sonic Cruiser.

The new plane would soon be called the 7E7. It was not uncommon for Boeing to use a letter between the numbers during the early part of a jetliner development program. The 7E7 was later changed to 787 in keeping with the 7-series jets that Boeing had been building since the 707.

Mulally named Bair to head the 7E7 program. Gillette became Bair's deputy, in charge of the new jet's production and development.

Bair would later say of Gillette: "Every airplane has one person who has guided it from notion to reality. For the 787, that person is Walt Gillette."

Initially, after the collapse of the Sonic Cruiser program, questions were raised whether Boeing, after years of half starts, would finally go forward with an all-new airplane program, or if the 7E7 would end up as the last few programs had. Boeing had started and stopped the 747-500/600, the 747X and now the Sonic Cruiser. And it was about to launch another program with the industry still in its worst-ever downturn following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Boeing had slashed production of its jetliners and laid off more than 35,000 of its commercial work force.

In early 2003, an academic paper by two professors at State University of New York-Buffalo got a lot more attention than it probably deserved. They predicted that Boeing would not go forward with the 7E7 program and would be out of the business of making jetliners by 2013.

The professors' key argument was that Boeing was sending more and more of its airplane work overseas, thus transforming itself from a manufacturer into a global services company.

Work outsourcing had many Boeing engineers worried, too.

Dramatic change in business

But Boeing was fundamentally changing the way it did business.

"An undertaking of a project like the Dreamliner requires more intellectual and financial capital than any one company in the world has," Gillette said.

Boeing would eventually select Japanese industry to manufacture the Dreamliner's wings, the Italians and Texas-based Vought Aircraft Industries to make the aft fuselage and horizontal stabilizer, and Spirit AeroSystems in Wichita, Kan., to make the nose and cockpit section. The only large 787 structure to be made by Boeing itself would be the vertical tail fin.

It was a bold manufacturing plan; nothing on this scale had ever been attempted.

Boeing was not even sure it could be done. The company was pushing the envelope with not only a new manufacturing plan, but a new suite of technologies unlike any used on a commercial jetliner.

The technology suite that Boeing had selected for the Sonic Cruiser would not have allowed that plane to enter service until 2008.

"A lot of things had started to come together around 2000 that could go into service in 2008," Gillette said. That time frame did not change when Boeing shifted to the Dreamliner.

"There was a suite of technologies -- materials, systems and engines -- that would allow the airplane to enter service in 2008 but not before," Gillette said. "We could not have done the Sonic Cruiser without those, so the Sonic Cruiser gave us this great umbrella to build the team" for what became the 787.

"If we had wanted the Dreamliner to go into service in 2006, it would not have worked," Gillette said.

The more electric 787 architecture, for example, could not have been perfected by 2006.

The Dreamliner will have miles less wiring than today's jets and a revolutionary way of electrically powering some critical systems, from the brakes to the de-icing mechanism in the wings. The 787 engines will be started electrically.

An electric plane will be more efficient, according to Boeing.

"The industry had kicked this around for a long time," said Mike Sinnett, Boeing's 787 systems chief. "But the state of technology was such that designing an electric jetliner was not possible -- until now."

Technology was evolving

Another piece of the technology puzzle that would not have been ready in 2006 was the large-scale automated production of the one-piece composite fuselage barrels that make the 787 a unique flying machine.

Early on, Boeing was not sure the 787 would have an airframe made almost entirely of composites. Boeing was still running an open competition between carbon fiber and advanced metals. Boeing understood the technical properties of carbon fiber, its strength to weight ratio. It knew carbon fiber would not fatigue or corrode. And most of all, Boeing knew how to blend carbon fiber with titanium for structural joints.

"We understood all of that," Gillette said. "What we did not know was where could aluminum alloys go in the same time period (by 2008). Could they catch carbon fiber in terms of strength to weight? But aluminum could never match carbon fiber when it came to corrosion or fatigue."

The dramatic difference, Gillette said, was like having a car with spark plugs that need to be changed every 50,000 miles, or one that will never require the plugs to be changed.

Boeing chose the latter. But its engineers did not know if it would even be possible to manufacture massive, one-piece composite fuselage barrels.

"No one had ever built commercial airplane structures of this size before," Gillette said.

Boeing decided to set the bar high, he explained.

"You can set targets that will break the team," Gillette said. "Or you can set targets that the team does not know how to reach, but which are not impossible to reach. What you are looking for is how high to set the bar so that it is possible even though you don't know how to do it."

Boeing considered so-called black aluminum for the 787 fuselage -- composite panels joined together like aluminum with long rows of fasteners. (This is the approach that Airbus plans with its A350 XWB.)

Instead, Boeing took a technological leap and opted for one-piece composite barrels. A computerized machine lays down carbon fiber on a mold, or mandrel. The carbon fiber is intensely tailored to a particular section of the plane. The thickness is not uniform. It changes constantly -- and only Boeing has the formula.

Once the mandrel has been wrapped with the carbon fiber, it is moved into a huge oven known as an autoclave, where it is cured under pressure and temperature.

But how to get the mandrel out of the barrel after it is baked?

That question was one of the reasons Boeing initially considered a fuselage of composite panels. The composite skin could be easily lifted off the mandrel. But how to pull that mandrel out of a tightly wrapped one-piece composite barrel that is not smooth or uniform on the inside?

That's a Boeing trade secret, Gillette said.

Boeing did not know how to get the mandrel out when it made the decision to use one-piece barrels for the Dreamliner. "That was one where we had to decide whether it was impossible or we just did not know how to do it but we could figure it out in time. The team obviously figured it out in time."

In December 2006, Boeing once again held its annual meeting with airlines at the Bell Harbor conference center. The day before, Boeing had conducted a virtual rollout of the 787. It had been three years since that airline meeting at the same conference center when the tide shifted in favor of the Dreamliner.

During the December meeting, Boeing's Large Cargo Freighter flew past the conference center in view of many of the participants. The modified 747, designed to carry the massive composite sections of the 787 to Boeing's Everett plant for final assembly of the Dreamliner, was making a test flight.

Bair was there, but not Gillette. He had retired a few months before, after 40 years with Boeing.

"I have taught you everything I know about airplane creation, and you have been wonderful listeners," Gillette wrote in a final e-mail to the 787 leadership team. "You all know what to do to bring the 787 to life."

Unveiling comes July 8

Life begins a week from Sunday, when that first plane is unveiled to 15,000 or more at the Everett plant, and what Boeing believes could be several million people watching the event live around the world.

Gillette will be at the factory celebration, as will Roundhill, who is also retired. Bair, who still leads the 787 program, will take center stage with Boeing Chairman and Chief Executive Jim McNerney.

In that farewell e-mail to the 787 team, Gillette recounted how he had set three goals after the 747-500/600 program was canceled in 1997 -- to cut the development costs of a new plane, to bring together the best resources of the aerospace world under Boeing's leadership and to find an airplane that would "tell the world that Boeing is back!"

Those goals, he wrote, had all been accomplished with the 787.

In a recent interview, Gillette was asked if the 787 will have as much impact on aviation as the 707 and 747.

The 707, he said, brought a dramatic improvement in speed and comfort, while the 747 represented a big step in range and seat-mile costs.

"The Dreamliner will be a different kind of step," Gillette said. "It is a more subtle step forward. It brings good gains in efficiency and payload range. But it is much more about a different way of organizing the intellect of the world to do an airplane, and to bring a new suite of technologies for the next generation or two of airplanes. And it also re-emphasizes the value of knowing what the passenger wants. They will enjoy the flight better than on any other airplane."

July 8, 2007

Thousands welcome the long-awaited 787 Dreamliner

By JAMES WALLACE AND ANDREA JAMES
P-I REPORTERS

EVERETT -- For only the eighth time since the dawn of the jet age, The Boeing Co. has added a new member to its jetliner family.

With some 15,000 people gathered Sunday inside the world's largest building -- Boeing's Everett factory -- and tens of thousands more watching the event live around the world, Boeing opened the hangar doors to late afternoon sun to reveal the 787 Dreamliner, the first commercial passenger plane that will have a mostly composite airframe rather than aluminum.

"It turned out pretty good, didn't it?" Mike Bair, who has headed the 787 program for Boeing during its more than three years in development, said a short while later as he stood beaming with his wife next to the freshly painted jet. It sparkled in the bright sunlight.

Those 15,000 Boeing employees, past and current Boeing executives, airline customers and others crowded around the new jet for an up-close look.

One of them was Joe Sutter, the father of the 747, who watched with similar pride as the 747-100 made its public debut at the same factory Sept. 30, 1968.

"It's a step forward in aviation, just like the 747 was for its day," the white-haired Sutter, now in his early 80s, said as he admired the newest member of Boeing's jetliner family, which began with the 707, the plane that helped usher in jet travel.

The Dreamliner is expected to be a game-changing plane, just like the 707 and 747. Because of its composite construction and new design, it will save airlines money in fuel and maintenance and provide passengers a much more comfortable ride, with better air quality, higher cabin pressure and bigger windows and storage bins.

With rock music blaring, employees crowded around the plane, reaching up to touch its shiny surface.

Howard Miller, one of the workers who put the decorative finish on the plane, stood near the nose, watching people touch it, including children hoisted on shoulders.

"I love it," he said. "They're touching a dream."

State Rep. John Lovick, D-Mill Creek, stood under the plane holding up his license plate from his years in the Washington State Patrol. It bore the number 787, which was his badge number.

"We voted for this back in 2003, but it was 7E7 back then," Lovick said, referring to a state tax incentive package worth more than $3 billion. "I said, 'Make that baby an eight.' "

Fellow Rep. Maralyn Chase, D-Shoreline, snapped Lovick's photo. "This is simply fabulous," she said.

The plane had been hidden away in the nearby paint factory before Sunday's rollout ceremony, and some of the 787 executives who have been part of its development had not wanted to see the Dreamliner until the official coming-out party.

"I could not have imagined how beautiful it is," said one of them, Mike Sinnett, who is in charge of the many new systems on the 787.

He said he was choking back emotions as the doors slowly opened to reveal the 787 to those inside the factory where Boeing builds its widebody jets -- the 767, 777, 747 and now the 787. "I could actually feel it before I saw it," said Sinnett, who's looking forward to the next stage of systems work.

Among the former Boeing executives in the crowd around the plane was Phil Condit, Boeing's former chairman and chief executive who once led the team that developed Boeing's last all-new jet, the 777, in the early 1990s.

"There's Phil Condit, there's Phil Condit," several Boeing employees said as they saw the former Boeing leader.

An engineer by training, Condit resigned as Boeing's chairman in December 2003.

"This happens because a lot of people do great things," Condit said before the ceremony, when he and other VIPs took their seats.

As emotional as the rollout of a new jet is, Condit said, it does not compare with that first flight, which for the 787 will come in late August or September.

"This one is shared by so many more people," Condit said of the rollout. "But there is nothing like something taking to the air for the first time. An airplane is not real until it flies. The world changes."

Boeing's test pilots, who fly the new jets, attended the rollout ceremony.

"We are all chomping at the bit," Frank Santoni, chief test pilot for Boeing and head of flight operations, said when asked about the anticipation of first flight. "We are ready to go."

Boeing recently named Randy Neville as the co-pilot who will join chief 787 test pilot Mike Carriker on that first flight. Carriker said Sunday that he feels "honored, nervous and privileged" about taking the plane up for the first time.

Before the rollout ceremony began, Chairman and Chief Executive Jim McNerney told the Seattle P-I, "Today is the fulfillment of a promise that Boeing employees made to themselves and to their customers. I feel great that it's coming along so well."

Earlier in the day, the head of rival Airbus sent a congratulatory letter to McNerney:

"On behalf of the global Airbus team, I would like to offer you and your Boeing colleagues our congratulations on the rollout of your first 787 aircraft," wrote Airbus President and CEO Louis Gallois.

"Today is a great day in aviation history. For, whenever such a milestone is reached in our industry, it always is a reflection of hard work by dedicated people inspired by the wonder of flight. Even if tomorrow Airbus will get back to the business of competing vigorously, today is Boeing's day -- a day to celebrate the 787."

Noticeable by his absence at the event Sunday was Alan Mulally, the former chief executive of Boeing Commercial Airplanes. He was not invited to the event, having left late last year to head up Ford Motor Co.

It was under Mulally's watch that the 787 was born. McNerney was only a board member when Mulally and Bair made the presentation to the board in December 2003, seeking the OK to start offering the 787 to customers. That approval came one day shy of the 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers' first powered flight.

Since then, airlines have been ordering the 787 in record numbers -- 677 firm orders to date. That makes the Dreamliner the fastest-selling plane ever by Boeing or Airbus. All 47 customers attended the rollout party.

Steve Udvar-Hazy, founder and CEO of International Lease Finance Corp. and the biggest customer for the Dreamliner, was eager to see it.

"Even if you buy 74, you don't get a peek before you guys," he said to a small group of journalists before the 3:30 p.m. ceremony started.

Hazy disclosed that he has a meeting Monday in Atlanta with Delta Air Lines. Delta's new CEO recently said that it might order as many as 100 Dreamliners.

Hazy said smaller airlines, such as Germany's Air Berlin -- which announced Saturday an order for 25 787-8s -- are now trying to get in line to buy 787s to get delivery slots before some of the large U.S. legacy carriers such as Delta and American decide to order the Dreamliner in large numbers. Continental and Northwest are the only U.S. airlines so far to have ordered the Dreamliner.

Once the other big legacy U.S. airlines start to order the plane, Hazy said, it will "dry up" delivery slots for four to five years.

Boeing has already said it's sold out of delivery positions until about 2013 or 2014. Boeing continues to look at how quickly it can ramp up production and how many Dreamliners it can produce once it has delivered 112 jets in 2008 and 2009. Boeing has said it won't make more than that the first two years because it doesn't want to overtax its production system.

Former "NBC Nightly News" anchor Tom Brokaw served as master of ceremonies for the hourlong event.

"Think of this as an airliner that is kind of a rock star," he told the crowd.

At the start of the rollout event, Larry Dickenson, Boeing's jetliner sales chief, led Boeing's 787 launch customers to their seats.

"This is the culmination of 40 years of great work and 30 years of selling airplanes," Dickenson said in an interview. "This day is so special, to see all these great customers and such a very special airplane. It does not get any better than this."

Scott Carson, head of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, spoke during the ceremony, as did McNerney.

Carson told the crowd that he took his first flight at age 3 or 4, and as a teen "I learned that flying can help you grow up, too."

The ceremony included live video feeds from Boeing's partners in Japan, Italy, South Carolina and Kansas.

Employees were enthusiastic as they arrived for the party.

"I've never been on a new airplane program before. It's pretty exciting," said Tammy Humphrey, a quality assurance manager who has worked for Boeing for 22 years.

Her son Tony, 8, could hardly sit still. "I am so excited about this," he said. "I've even made the Lego Dreamliner already."

Capt. John Prater, a 777 pilot for Continental Airlines and president of the Air Line Pilots Association, said he was pleased that Boeing sought design input from pilots for the 787.

"It's taking advantage of new technology -- from engineering to new material, but it's still an airplane, and it has to be flown by pilots," he said. "I'm looking forward to being a captain on the 787."

After the event, Bair said in an interview that he was ready to get back to work Monday morning. Much work remains to get the first 787 ready for its maiden flight.

The pace probably won't slow down much until Boeing has delivered the first several jets to customers, starting with All Nippon Airways in May, Bair said.