One of the factory tours that we’ve heard is good is the Boeing factory tour in Everett, just an hour south of our campground. We got up early again, had breakfast and were on the road, along with everyone else who had to be to work today. Yep, rush hour traffic. We usually try to miss that but we wanted the 9:00 tour so we’d have time in the afternoon to do whatever else we wanted.
We knew that the Boeing building was the biggest in the world but, until you drive by it and keep on driving by it for a while, you can’t imagine how big it really is. Here are 2 of the 6 doors, each composed of 6 sliding panels. Each of these 6 doors is wider than a football field is long. In fact, the building itself could hold 75 football fields. It is composed of 6 long assembly lines and you can see the line-up in the picture from Google below. The original building is on the left with the dark roof, with 3 1/2-mile lines while the newer part of the building is on the right with 2 1/2 lines.
Below the building, across the Boeing Freeway and below the 2 planes is the paint building which can hold 2 planes at once for paint. On the left in the picture below is a line of planes that have been sold but are waiting for paint or for test flights by the pilots of the airlind which has bought them or are waiting for whatever. And - I don’t know what all the other planes in this picture are for: our guide didn’t tell us. By the way, planes can come out of the assembly line building, cross the Boeing Freeway on one of the bridges and roll into the paint building. Imagine driving along the Boeing Freeway and looking up to see a plane rolling by on the over pass, jet engines hanging over the side.
We got to the Future of Flight Aviation Center for our tour. No cameras. No backpacks. No cell phones. No purses. No pagers. Obviously this is a manufacturing plant tour. We saw a short video before the tour and then we were off.
Huge assembly lines, obviously big enough for a plane to turn in. Lots of people working on them. Who controls all of this? What a massive operation.
When we were at the last assembly line, I just caught a glimpse of a short video, in time lapse, of a 787 being made. I just caught a short glimpse of it but it is available on line. It really showed how a plane this big is put together much better than words could express. I really wish they had shown this film prior to our tour - I think it might have made the tour much better.
After the tour we spent some time in the Future of Flight Center where they had some mock-ups, some older plane sections and some displays. Here is Gary by the tail of a plane.
And, me by an engine. While I was standing looking at the engine, I saw 3 people taking selfies of themselves in front of it. I volunteered to be the official photographer and take their pictures. Thought they might get more out of them because they could see the whole engine. I"m as stiff as a popsicle stick here - I need to start waving my hands around or something.
Here’s a fuselage of a 787, one of Boeing’s smaller planes to show with luggage to show how large these are.
They had a pilots compartment to sit in. Both of us had a hard time fitting into this - notice how narrow the spot between the console and the seat is. We had no idea that there were so many buttons and handles and switches and - well, you get the idea.
Lots of rivets in the older planes compared to the newer ones. At one point, we were told that a plane had 3,000,000 parts, 1,500,000 were rivets or other types of fasteners. Obviously, the lighter the plane is, the less it costs to fly it - and the lower the prices, right? Ha, ha, ha.
Here’s a plane on a test run. Note the fancy paint job. This is what they put on to protect the aluminum fuselage.
Time to go. Note how this 60’s car really doesn’t fit into modern parking places. Remember these boats? Were our parking lots and garages really big enough for these boats back in the 60’s and 70’s.
Interesting tour but I wish the film had been shown earlier to make the tour guides words much more meaningful. I would have known much more before we actually took the tour and known what to look for. Or, maybe I’m just a visual kind of person.
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