Aviation NEWS! : Second B747-8 (Lufthansa) begins Test flight

Image of Boeing Media

On April 26th 2011, The second Boeing (NYSE:BA) 747-8 Intercontinental, RC021, made a sucessfull test flight carying the Lufthansa primary colors (without company logo, text and registration) with test registration N6067U. This completes the two-airplane test fleet for this type of Boeing's aircraft.

Piloted by Captains Keith Otsuka and Ron Johnson, with Ralf Chaffin as system operator and Greg Lichneckert as flight analyst, they took off at 9.26 a.m. Pacific time from Paine Field.

Completed a 2h:25m. flight reaching 28.000ft and airspeed of 275 knots.

Image of Lufthansa media

RC21 will be used primarily for testing all the interior systems such as cabin airconditioning and venting, smoke detections etc. Boeing is also to check fuel consumption, function and reliability. The test phase will cover aprox. 600 hours of test flights.
Lufthansa is speculating to have the "dash eight" B747 in service sometime in the first months of 2010 wiht registration D-ABYE (Yaknee, Echo).
Watch sneak peak video on youtube here!