The Boeing 747 Dreamlifter (formerly Large Cargo Freighter or LCF) is a wide-body cargo aircraft. Cargo is placed in the aircraft by the world's longest cargo loader. It is an extensively modified Boeing 747-400 and is used exclusively for transporting 787 aircraft parts to Boeing's assembly plants from suppliers around the world.
Flight testing
The second 747 LCF, N780BA, lifts off from Nagoya, Japan (2010)
On September 16, 2006, N747BC arrived at Boeing Field, Seattle to complete the flight test program. Swing-tail testing was done at the Boeing factory in Everett. The second airplane, N780BA, made its inaugural test flight on February 16, 2007. The third began modification in 2007. The first two LCFs entered service in 2007 to support the final assembly of the first 787 Dreamliners.
Delivery times for the 787's wings, built in Japan, will be reduced from around 30 days to just over eight hours with the 747 LCF. Evergreen International Airlines (unrelated to EVA Air or EGAT), a U.S. air freight operator based in McMinnville, Oregon, operated the LCF fleet until August 2010. Then Atlas Air, which was awarded a nine-year contract for the operation of the aircraft in March 2010, took over LCF operation.[19] Evergreen had achieved a 93% on flight schedule performance with the LCF, and sued Boeing for $175 million, which the court mostly dismissed.
Boeing 747 LCF, N780BA with its swing-tail cargo bay access open at Paine Field, the home of the Boeing Everett Factory (2015)
In June 2006, the first DBL-100 cargo loader used for loading 787 parts into the 747 LCF was completed. In December 2006, Boeing announced the 747 LCF would be named Dreamlifter, a reference to the 787's name, Dreamliner. It unveiled a standard livery for the aircraft that included a logo reminiscent of the 787's Dreamliner logo.
Certification was initially planned for early 2007, but was pushed back to June 2007. The aircraft's winglets were removed to resolve excess vibration and other hand ling characteristics prior to final certification. In the meantime, as part of the flight test program, LCF delivered major sections of the 787 from partner sites around the world to the Boeing factory in Everett, Washington for final assembly. The 747 LCF was granted FAA type certification on June 2, 2007. From its first flight in 2006 until certification in 2007, the Dreamlifter completed 437 hours of flight testing along with 639 hours of ground testing.
Of the four 747 Dreamlifters Boeing acquired, three were complete and operational by June 2008, and the fourth became operational in February 2010.
