Flight club

Originally published in the New Scientist

I am sitting inside the cabin for
the new longhaul 787 aircraft
from manufacturer Boeing and
it feels huge.
Boeing is calling this aircraft the
Dreamliner and a lot of the thought has
gone into passenger comfort as well as
the aerodynamics. A good example is the
inclusion of thousands of tiny blue lightemitting
diodes which fool the eye into
thinking the 787 cabin is larger.
“Eyes can focus very easily on cold
white light, but the frequency of blue
we use makes it very hard to focus on,
enhancing the sense of space,” says Ken
Price, who heads up the revenue team
of the 787 project, working with airline
customers.
The galley of the Dreamliner is where
this sense of space is most impressive;
the entryway is an atrium arch, giving the
sense of a hallway in a stately home. There
are other tricks, too. The aircraft is the first
commercial airliner to be built of advanced
composites, which allow for moister air at a
higher, more natural pressure than in metal
aircraft as the fuselage has no rusting rivets
to worry about.
Boeing is obviously banking on passengers
wanting to find out more about this new
technology, as it has transformed the
traditional tour of its facility north of Seattle
into a Future of Flight museum packed with
concept aircraft from blended wing bodies
to hypersonic aircraft capable of reaching
Sydney from London in two hours.
The airframer’s plant is a fascinating
place too. I met my wife on a tour, having
shoe horned ourselves into the cramped
crew sleeping quarters that are hidden
inside the roof of a 777. The efficiency of
the facility’s work flow processes are as
much a marvel as its sheer size.
Located at the edge of the Puget Sound that
separates the US from Canada’s Vancouver
Island, the Boeing factory is also close to an
area of outstanding natural beauty.
For those who like to combine the
traditional holiday habits of good food and
wine with a little aeronautic sightseeing,
the factory of Boeing’s archrival Airbus is
just as attractive. Its A380 visitor centre,
dedicated to the two-storey flying castle, is
in the southwestern French city of Toulouse.
There are plenty of quirks about the
beautiful city, known to Frenchmen as the
home of rugby and fine food. That the
Airbus facility is here at all, in the middle of
the mountainous Midi-Pyrénées region, is
a twist of historical fate: it is the site where
French aviation pioneer Pierre-Georges
Latécoère founded his factory at the end
of the First World War, far from both the
German border and sea access.
Today, the British built wings and
German-built fuselages have to wind their
way through medieval towns on transporters
from the nearest port in Bordeaux to the
Toulouse suburb of Blagnac.
The site was most famous as the
headquarters of the Franco-British
supersonic aeroplane Concorde, which first
took flight from Blagnac in 1969.
All of this history is presented in a
surprisingly cheap Airbus facility tour,
which Nicole Pradines from the tourism
board of Midi-Pyrénées recommends
combining with a visit to the space
adventure park Cité de l’Espace.
Aside from space paraphernalia from the
past half-century, its Terradome presents
the history of space from the Big-Bang
to the creation of the solar system, while
its hypothetical human settlement on the
moon is entitled, confusingly, Astralia.
Both the third and fourth largest aircraft
manufacturers, Bombardier of Canada
and Embraer of Brazil, also allow tours
of their facilities, although Montreal is far
easier to reach than the jungle city of São
José dos Campos.

FLIGHT TIMES
• The Airbus facility in Toulouse,
France, is home to the world’s fastest
commercial plane, the Concorde, and
the largest, the A380. Manatour Taxiway
offers a combined tour of the A380
assembly line and the Concorde for
EUR22 (AU$41): http://pagespersoorange.
fr/manatour-taxiway.fr/gb/
airbus.htm
• The Future of Flight Aviation
Centre and Boeing Tour are located in
Mukilteo, Washington, approximately
30 miles north of Seattle. The centre
features hands-on exhibits, videos,
graphics and interactive stations to
involve and appeal to the whole family.
For example, you can digitally design
and test your own jet or ride a simulator
of the multi-passenger XJ5 supersonic
jet. General admission costs US$15
(AU$22). Further details are available at
www.futureofflight.org