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02/28/2008: "Not Exactly Maverick and Goose"

Being a commercial airliner pilot must be a heady experience. We all wake up in the morning and head off to our jobs, but most of us don't control a multi-million dollar machine and hold the lives of hundreds of people in our hands. Clearly, it takes a special kind of person. The military has traditionally been a rich source of pilots for airlines, and they bring with them a certain swagger to their jobs. Sometimes, though, all that responsibility and swagger leads a pilot to make a decision he probably regrets.

Boeing Commercial Aircraft has two factories in the suburbs of Seattle. Renton, to the south of Seattle, is home to the 737 factory while the main factory is in Everett, 25 miles to the north. The main assembly building, largest building in the world by volume, is where the 747, 767, 777 and the new 787 airliners are built. Once the aircraft is complete, it's rolled to adjacent Paine Field for final checkout, flight test and delivery.

As you might imagine, the delivery of a new airliner is a big deal. In the recent case of Cathay Pacific Airlines, when they were scheduled to take delivery of a new $250 million 777-300ER jetliner, executives of the company were joined by the airlines' chief pilot, Ian Wilkinson, who was to fly the new airliner and VIP passengers back to the CP home base in Hong Kong. I don't know if he just got caught up in the moment, or maybe had watched too many reruns of Top Gun, but shortly after taking off on the long trip January 30, Wilkinson decided to make a flyby pass on the Boeing facility - really low.

Fortunately for all of us, airliner fans often take pictures of the delivery, so we have the photographic evidence of the end of Captain Wilkinson's career. As is clear from the photo, the 777 is gear up, flaps up and flying at around 250 kts - all while hitting a minimum altitude of 28 feet! Remember, this is a quarter-billion dollar airplane full of airline executives and VIPs. Talk about needing a wet cleanup on the center aisle.

On the several trips I've made to Everett to work with my software counterparts (they use the same software package to perform final assembly on the 787 as we do to build satellites), I've often crossed the street to Paine Field to watch the flight ramp. Needless to say, I never saw anything like this!

As word got out about Wilkinson's little stunt, CP tried hard to squash the news, and was able to force YouTube to pull the video of the flyby off their servers. Fortunately, LiveLeak has larger stones than YT. Enjoy ...