First Flight again: Boeing’s 777X finally gets off the ground

Congratulations to Boeing Commercial Airplanes for — after a day’s weather delay on top of over a year’s programme delays — conducting a successful first flight of its 777X, the re-engined large twinjet on which the airframer is pinning many of its future hopes.

The die seems cast for the 777-9 (though perhaps not the 777-8) to be a substantial part of the world of aviation for the next twenty-plus years.

But first Boeing will have to certify it. The proximate pachyderm, of course, is that the 777X — like the 737 MAX — is a re-engined derivative family member of an older aircraft, one of the benefits of which is software-driven pilot commonality.