Originally Posted by
Grebe
My confusion/memory re VA001 came from an event in about 1992- . I had kept a copy of the 767 firing order published in 1982 or so, and had dug it out as part of my 1992-93 deposition on some specific tooling and patent issues. AS I recall ( but could be wrong ) the firing order showed VA001 as being ***assigned *** to UAL. The assembly dates were critical, specifically when the tool was first used on a part of the 767 ' production' aircraft versus when the firm that had patented the tool and claimed a design and manufacturing date of the tool as being about 6 months later. Eventually they lost the patent because I was able to show via records accurate to within a few M days the tool setup dates, load dates, etc . I have since thrown away virtually all my notes and depositions. So based on my memory I ** assumed** that UAL had eventually taken delivery. I left the 767 program in 1983 for what was known as WILO
and came back to everett on the 777 program about 1993 or so.
VA001 was originally intended to go to UAL as you note, but there were some issues with the way it was built that made it unsuitable for commercial service, so Boeing held on to it. Then again, the general view is that Boeing made far more money leasing it to the USAF as the AOA test bed than they would after doing a post-flight test refurbe and delivering it to United.
Regarding the Seattle Times article, I almost laughed when I saw the part about "
The test plane is a complete write-off". As if that airframe was ever going to used for much of anything else after the ultimate load test
