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Uh oh! More Stratoliner news...

Posted by bdk on Wed Apr 09, 2003 04:41:10 PM

Aerospace Notebook: Restoration of Stratoliner hits financial turbulence
Seattle Post-Intelligencer 04/09/03
author: James Wallace
(Copyright 2001)




The Boeing Co.'s historic 307 Stratoliner has run into a few problems.


Most of them are green, as in the color of money.


Some of those working on the restoration project were told, when they were sent home last week, that the project was over budget and out of money.


The buzz around the local aviation community was that the project might be dead.


But a Boeing spokeswoman said yesterday that the Stratoliner restoration has not been stopped, just slowed until some issues can be worked out.


After a six-year restoration, the four-engine Stratoliner -- the first passenger plane with a pressurized cabin -- crashed into Seattle's Elliott Bay in March 2002 while on a routine test flight. It ran out of gas. The flight crew was not hurt, but the plane was badly damaged.


Boeing decided to pay for the repairs. Then came the industry's worst-ever downturn, and Boeing's commercial airplane operations are not exactly flush with money.


"The scope has been a little bigger than we thought," Boeing's Liz Verdier said of the Stratoliner restoration.


After a short flight-test program, the Stratoliner is supposed to be flown back to Washington, D.C., in late July where it will become a star attraction at the National Air and Space Museum's new annex at Dulles International Airport. The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center is scheduled to open in December, in time for the 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers' first powered flight.


Boeing built just 10 of the planes. The one that made a splash in Elliott Bay is the only one left. It was delivered to Pan Am in March 1940 and flew commercial routes in the Caribbean before being used as a military transport.


The Stratoliner could barely climb past 20,000 feet. Modern jetliners fly nearly twice that high. But it was the world's first high-altitude commercial transport, and it helped lay the foundation for Boeing's commercial future.


It is one of two history-making Boeing planes that will go into the new Dulles museum this year. The Dash 80, prototype for Boeing's first commercial jetliner, the 707, is scheduled to be delivered in September. That aircraft is kept in the same Plant 2 hangar where the Stratoliner is being restored.


The Dash 80 last flew July 15, 1991, when it made a flyover of Boeing facilities in Puget Sound to commemorate the company's 75th anniversary and the 37th anniversary of the jet's first flight.


Only some "tweaking" remains to get the Dash 80 in shape for its flight to the museum, Verdier said.


And most of the work has been completed on the Stratoliner, she added.


"We have not shut it down," she said. 'But until we get this figured out, we did send them (workers) away."


Those were the people working on structures, she said. Work continues on the plane's interior and systems.


The Stratoliner restoration is being done by volunteers as well as a Boeing team known as AOG, short for Aircraft On Ground, an elite group who repair planes around the world.


Verdier said the structural damage that the Stratoliner sustained when it ditched into Elliott Bay has proved more difficult to repair than initially believed. New parts were needed, and that required tooling, she said. And time. And money.


Some of those parts are late, which has disrupted the repairs.


And she acknowledged there are money problems.


"After we got in there, we discovered we needed to start from scratch with the structures," she said.


Boeing has not said how much the restoration is costing.


Despite the challenges, the Stratoliner should still make its public rollout at the Museum of Flight on June 14, Verdier said.


Although the Dash 80 is supposed to join the Stratoliner at the new aviation museum annex, it's not certain whether the historic jet will be repainted before it goes back for display.


Again, the reason is a lack of green.

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