Boeing Factory Tour
If you are ever in Seattle, Washington and have a couple of hours to spare you should consider booking tickets on the Future of Flight & Boeing Tour in Mukilteo, WA (about 30-minutes Northeast of Seattle) -- it is well worth the effort. The tour starts at the Future of Flight museum which includes exhibits from Boeing's 100-year history and an amazing view of the Boeing flight-line, hangars, and runway. The roof-top viewing area allows excellent vista of dozens of airplanes that are awaiting final delivery to their new owners - airlines that purchased the Boeing 767, 777, or 787 aircraft that were assembled on the other side of the Interstate in the largest factory building in North America (472 million cubic feet of room). You can see aircraft that are painted with the insignia of airlines from across the globe that are awaiting final inspections and the arrival of the airline's aircrew who will sign for the new aircraft and taxi it to the Boeing runway on it's first flight to their owner's country and airport to start carrying passengers or cargo to their destinations.
Sadly ... cameras are not allowed on the actual 90-minute tour inside the factory (allegedly due to a mishap where a visitor dropped a camera off the viewing area platform onto the wing of a new airplane in the factory causing $$$,$$$.$$ worth of damage to a wing) and so you have to leave your cameras and smartphones in the visitor center (after a stern lecture by Boeing security about no personal devices allowed in the factory). After you watch a 10-minute movie about the history of Boeing and the current company you are ushered onto a bus and driven through the flightine area and across a bridge over the Interstate that each and every new Boeing aircraft has to cross when coming from the enormous factory building to head to the delivery area.
When you arrive at the factory building you can't help but notice the huge hangar doors in the side of the building (more on that later). You exit the bus and head into tunnels that run under the middle of the assembly factory hangar and walk to a large freight elevator which takes you up to a viewing platform high above the middle of the factor floor. The tour guide was outstanding and provided a constant stream of facts ... mind-blowing facts ... about the Boeing organization and the activities at the factory you are beholding. You start at the 747/787 assembly line ... WOW ... seeing the iconic Boeing 747 in "parts" spread out before you in assembly jigs, parts bins, and sections of fuselage and wing parts is humbling to any Geek. Above you is a complex network of sky-cranes built into the roof of the factory which are used to carry the various parts of a 747 or 787 over to the final assembly area where the light-green plane (the color of the special coating on the aluminum frame that protects the parts before they are finally assembled into a complete aircraft and then sent over to another building for painting). In a typical workday you have tens of thousands of people working at the plant - legions of engineers, assemblers, electricians, mechanics, inspectors, accountants, inventory clerks, logistics planners, buyers, sales people, ... and the list goes on and on - who help create the airplanes we board to fly across the state, country, or globe.
After about 30 minutes in the 747 assembly hangar you head back to the bus for a ride to another area of the factory (as I mentioned, it is huge) and arrive at the 767/777 assembly area. On one side you see the line of 767s being assembled from the various parts that are built and shipped to the factory from factories across the globe (shipped in via railroad lines, ships, and even by other freight airplanes to the factory). On the other side you see the 777's being assembled on moving assembly lines (yes ... the factory floor contains a moving assembly process that creeps across the factory floor at an imperceptible rate) where the last step is the installation of the "power plants" (a.k.a. the "engines") that are made by General Electric or Rolls Royce.
After we watched the 767/777 assembly line for about 30 minutes we headed back to the bus for the ride back across the bridge to the Future of Flight museum and AMAZING gift shop. As we boarded the bus we saw a United Airlines Boeing 787 being towed out of the now opened enormous hangar doors and out towards the final assembly / delivery area (basically ... we watched it being "born"). The bus returns you to the museum building and you exit through the giftshop. The giftshop is flight Geek heaven where you can purchase beautiful scale models of almost any/every Boeing commercial and military aircraft they have made which then flows into the Future of Flight museum containing a small but fascinating slice of Boeing's aerospace and space history. You could spend hours in the museum (at least I wished I could have) learning about Boeing's contribution to aerospace history. If you have time (and are headed to Sea-Tac Airport anyway) you can stop at the Museum of Flight in Seattle to see exhibits of what they have helped create. While most people think of Boeing as a commercial or military aircraft company, Boeing played an instrumental part in the NASA Saturn V / Apollo missions to the Moon, the Space Shuttle program, and the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle which may take the first Humans to Mars. This is a tour that anyone with a pulse and love of aircraft / flight / space / engineering / technology would enjoy. Tours are available daily.
https://www.futureofflight.org
http://www.museumofflight.org
http://www.boeing.com/commercial/#/orders-deliveries
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