Ah yes, Boeing’s lovely albatross. Three years behind schedule and dragging the stock down for the past five… Well, fast forward to now. The company has delivered a whopping 33 planes, and ANA just launched 787 service between SEA and NRT. I was lucky to nab a seat on a recent trip.

The cabin has a 1-2-1 configuration, so with my window seat, I got to sit next to no one *sigh…* Thus, with no one to chat with, I started documenting the flight (this post won’t have anything to do with polymers):

Well, gate S11 at SEATAC has the worst window placement ever, so I can’t see the plane… I guess I’ll have to wait until I land.

@ Narita

With the next eight hours to myself, I’m unpacking my camera to shoot away. Climbing out of SEA provided views of Rainier, what I believe was a parhelion (sun dog), and also the Asiana flight on its way to Seoul, South Korea.

Also, the wing flex that engineers and airplane fanatics get all hot and bothered about? Well, let’s just say that it’s not too dramatic from the seat. And I had a pretttttty good view of it.

One thing that ANA lacks is a good movie selection, so I had the options of watching Total Recall, Spiderman, sitting, or an airplane cabin photo stroll.

I choose to stroll.

…and ended up with a short critique of the Sky Interior. Here’s a shot of business class aft of door 2. The ceiling and bin wash lights were new to Boeing cabins at the time, although there is a sharp cutoff of light on the bins.

Other things spotted that I’m not going to post photos of:

• Poor seal installations between seats and sidewalls.
• Uneven ECS ducting runs along the bins and sidewalls.
• ANA had to offset their door 2 galleys, so they don’t have a full arch at the entrance.
• People struggled with the “universal” touchpoints…. One guy tried to pull and push the bin handle for a good ten seconds (think of a clawing motion)…
  *double sigh*
• The light blocks at the class dividers were hideous (think thin plastic covered with a vinyl bag).

While shooting the galleys after meal service, one of the FA’s asked, “do you like airplanes?”
I replied, “one could say that.”

We had a short discussion, and then the lead FA joined in as well. Their thoughts:

• The plane and galleys are much smaller than the 777.
• They prefer the 777 galleys, but prefer the 787’s cabin pressure (more humidity).
• It’s quiet.
• The Lavatory doors will SLAM shut under normal operation… (and it’s ridiculously loud).
• They don’t cycle through all the mood lighting scenes, but then told me to go back to my seat for the “Rainbow Show”

Door 2 Galley… WITH A MICROWAVE!

The infamous trash compactor…

Personal Rainbow Show!!!

After the fabulous show, I decided it was movie time.

• I switch on succumbed to Total Recall. It was awful.
• Next up was Spiderman. …why did they make this? and Emma Stone was a blonde? What the heck?
• After that, I found To Rome with Love. Not bad! 
• I saw Midnight in Paris on a previous flight, so now I hope there’s always one Woody Allen movie on the IFE library.
• Oh, and while we’re talking movies, everyone should watch Carnage.

Okay, three movies is enough, so let’s chat windows (this entry is quite schizophrenic…). The 787 doesn’t have window shades. Instead, at the press of a button, a current is passed through a fluid that’s placed between the window panes. This fluid can shift from transparent to opaque.

Well, nearly opaque. One issue is that on sunny flights, you’ll always see a nice green-tinted sun. But it’s still cool, and the windows are larger.

After the chit chat with the flight attendants, my next meal had a nice note, STICKERS, and I even got a “First 787 Flight Certificate” that was signed by the pilots (which will go on my cubicle wall).

^Grilled Arabesque Greenling for breakfast.

As you can see, there was lovely light outside

But holysh*t, all of this changed on the descent to Narita. We passed through a storm and got struck by lightning.

All I saw was a bright flash around the engine nacelle; accompanied with a loud bang, felt the plane shake a lot, and smelled something burning… and the plane grew silent. I presumed it was a lightning strike and not an engine issue (since you know… there wasn’t any fire or panic among the crew), but we didn’t hear officially from the attendants for a few minutes.

We landed a short while later, and being a dork, I looked up the plane’s flight schedule. It was delayed 1-hr for its return flight to Seattle. I wonder what they had to do to the plane…

OH, one last thing. The LAVATORY. I wanted to get a profile photo of myself in the lav, but I couldn’t bring myself to walk into the lav with my giant SLR camera…

REGRET x1000… sigh, maybe next time.

Also, the lavs have a window, and the toilets have bidets. The water for said bidet is not heated; like typical Japanese bidet/toilet combos. Consider yourself warned.