Test Flight

Their losses deepening, European airlines on Sunday stepped up pressure to reopen the skies by carrying out passenger-free test flights despite the layer of volcanic ash that kept most planes across the continent grounded for a fourth day. Airlines in Germany, the Netherlands, Britain and France sent jets close to or into the plume of ash and dust thrown up by the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland, in bids to demonstrate that flying conditions over...

With their losses mounting, European airlines began experimenting Sunday with test flights to see if air travel could somehow resume despite the cloud of volcanic ash in the atmosphere that shows little sign of budging. The Dutch airline KLM said it had received permission from aviation authorities to fly seven of its planes stuck in Duesseldorf, Germany, back to Amsterdam one by one with only a crew on board. The first one departed early Sunday morning. "These are test flights," KLM President and CEO Peter Hartman said in a statement.

Robert M. White was a 38-year-old U.S. Air Force major and record-setting test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base in 1962 when he joined the elite ranks of America's four astronauts. But Mercury astronauts Alan Shepard, Virgil Grissom, John Glenn and Scott Carpenter went into space seated atop ballistic missiles and returned in capsules that parachuted onto the ocean. White did it as the pilot of a rocket-powered X-15 research airplane, flying nearly 60 miles above the Earth's surface and completing a conventional landing on Rogers Dry Lake at Edwards Air Force Base.

At long last, Boeing Co.'s 787 passenger jet took to the skies Tuesday, making its maiden test flight and marking a major milestone in commercial aviation. Thousands of Boeing workers and journalists were on hand at Paine Field just north of Seattle to witness the takeoff of the Dreamliner, a 250-seat jetliner that promises to burn less fuel and last longer than other aircraft flying today. "This was a big step for Boeing," said aerospace analyst Richard Aboulafia of Teal Group Corp.

SEATTLE -- The crowd of workers and dignitaries lining Paine Field today held their breath as the Boeing 787 Dreamliner roared down the runway, lifted its nose into the air and then flew north with two chase planes trailing along the horizon and then into a bank of clouds. For the first time, a passenger jetliner with a body and wings made of super-hardened plastics took wing, a milestone that promises to usher in a new era in aviation. The plane was scheduled to circle over the Puget Sound for four or so hours, as Michael Carriker and co-pilot Randall Neville test whether the 787's state-of-the-art wing and electronics systems perform as designed.

A roar sweeps across the Los Angeles Coliseum. It is the closing ceremony of the 1984 Olympics. The rousing cheer intensifies when, from the eastern sky, with a full moon as a backdrop, a strange object appears. With flashing lights and a roving spotlight, an alien spaceship approaches the Coliseum. The Earth signals the spaceship with the "Olympic Fanfare" and the spaceship responds with a dazzling display of lights and sound. It then lands behind the Coliseum peristyle in a fury of smoke, light and fire.

Boeing Co. said the initial test flight and delivery of its long-awaited 787 jetliner remained on schedule. The Chicago aerospace company has postponed introduction of the next-generation aircraft four times because of production glitches and a two-month strike last fall. The delays have cost Boeing credibility and billions of dollars in anticipated costs and penalties. Scott Carson, president and chief executive of Boeing's commercial aircraft division, said Boeing continued to work toward the inaugural 787 test flight in the second quarter of this year and the first delivery in the first quarter of 2010.