Boeing retires final 787 Dreamliner test aircraft after 16 years

Boeing has retired its last 787-8 Dreamliner test aircraft after 16 years of flight.The aircraft (ZA004) first flew on Feb. 24, 2010, from Paine Field International Airport (PAE) in Everett, Washington, as part of the 787 certification campaign. The aircraft took its final flight from Boeing Field (BFI) to Pinal Airpark Airport (MZJ) in Arizona on Wednesday, two weeks shy of its 16th anniversary, according to the Air Current. The flight was conducted by Captains Heather Ross and Craig Bomben, who conducted the aircraft's maiden flight in 2010. No plans for the aircraft have been announced outside of storage. ZA004 was the fourth 787 aircraft built and was used for both certification and development work, according to Air Data News. It was used for aerodynamics, high-speed performance, propulsion testing, flight loads, community noise evaluation and extended operations (ETOPS) assessments. In its later years, it served as a propulsion-centric test bed for improvements to the Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines. RELATED STORIES:Boeing announces its largest landing gear exchange at Singapore AirshowBoeing must do more before regaining certification responsibilityAir India grounds Boeing Dreamliner due to possible fuel switch defect The Dreamliner was not originally intended to be a test aircraft, but was originally assembled in 2008 as part of an order from Northwest Airlines for 18 787-8s, according to SimplyFlying. After Northwest's merger with Delta Airlines the same year, Delta canceled the order and Boeing added the aircraft to its fleet of test aircraft. The majority of the 787 test fleet were retired or sold in 2011-12, but ZA004 was deemed too valuable, specialized and instrumented to lose. In 2014 in was added to the Boeing ecoDemonstrator program, and then it was added as a dedicated flying testbed for the Trent 1000 engines in 2017.