I’ve mentioned before that the airport by my workplace (KCEF) doesn’t often see civilian aircraft larger than a Gulfstream. Every now and then there’s a big charter flight that rolls in, or a few birds parked when the UN is in session, but that’s it. Which makes this 787 particularly stand out.
The plane arrived at the end of March, parked by the GA terminal, and then... just sat there. After a couple weeks they turned it around 180 degrees so it faced the opposite direction, but aside from that it hasn’t moved. Some days the cabin door is open and the mobile stairs are at the plane, sometimes there’s no sign of activity around it. Finally yesterday my curiosity won out and I checked the tail number. I’m not sure what I expected, but I definitely didn’t expect the first result to be an incident report from March 8, 2018.
Per Aviation Safety Net:
“A Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner suffered a nose gear collapse at Moses Lake-Grant County Airport, Washington, USA. The aircraft was parked outside a hangar while undergoing conversion into a VIP configuration.
“Korean Air was doing the conversion for an anonymous client, the airline stated to FlightGlobal.”
There’s a lot of interesting tidbits there. So after the incident and repair Korean Air (presumably) finished conversion, gave it its current nondescript paint, then for its first and only flight in a year flew it from Moses Lake to Westover? Y tho?
