Skip to main content

The long wait is over – Boeing hands over keys to first 787 Dreamliner

It’s been a long time coming but Boeing Commercial Airplanes chief executive Jim Albaugh has finally handed over the keys (actually it was one really big key) of the company’s first Boeing 787 Dreamliner passenger jet to president and CEO of All Nippon Airways, Shinichiro Ito. The ceremony took place on Sunday at a rainy Paine Field airport in Everett, Washington.

The first of the ANA’s 55 Dreamliners will land at Tokyo’s Haneda airport on Wednesday local time. Around 800 787s have so far been ordered by airlines around the world.

Boeing Commercial Airplanes chief Jim Albaugh hands a large key to ANA's Shinichiro Ito, signifying delivery of Boeing's first 787 Dreamliner jet. Image used with permission by copyright holder

Issues concerning design and production meant that ANA had to wait three years longer than expected for delivery. The Japanese airline will be hoping it has been worth the wait. The Dreamliner’s innovative design ensures extra comfort for passengers and much improved fuel efficiency.

Whereas most passenger jets flying today have an aluminum skin, the Dreamliner’s is made of ultra-light but extremely strong carbon fiber. Its strength has made it possible to construct larger windows — 65 percent bigger than what regular planes have — so you should get a better view.

Instead of pull-down shades, the new Boeing plane has incorporated electronic dimmers, so if you want to look out of the window while the person beside you is trying to get to sleep, you can lower the level of the light coming in to please both of you.

One of the most fascinating claims Boeing has made about the new aircraft is that passengers won’t feel quite so rough after a long flight. This is apparently caused partly by the cabin being pressurized to an altitude of about 8,000 feet. The 787 will be pressurized to about 6,000 feet, so the idea is that your body won’t have so much difficulty in adjusting to conditions.

Mood lighting should also help travelers feel more comfortable, and larger overhead bins should mean passengers won’t be fighting for space when storing hand luggage at the start of a flight.

ANA will begin using the 787 on domestic routes from mid-November, with the first international route — Tokyo to Frankfurt in Germany — starting in January next year.

[Source: AP / CNN / AFP] [Top image: AFP / bottom image: Reuters Video]

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
Digital Trends’ Top Tech of CES 2023 Awards
Best of CES 2023 Awards Our Top Tech from the Show Feature

Let there be no doubt: CES isn’t just alive in 2023; it’s thriving. Take one glance at the taxi gridlock outside the Las Vegas Convention Center and it’s evident that two quiet COVID years didn’t kill the world’s desire for an overcrowded in-person tech extravaganza -- they just built up a ravenous demand.

From VR to AI, eVTOLs and QD-OLED, the acronyms were flying and fresh technologies populated every corner of the show floor, and even the parking lot. So naturally, we poked, prodded, and tried on everything we could. They weren’t all revolutionary. But they didn’t have to be. We’ve watched enough waves of “game-changing” technologies that never quite arrive to know that sometimes it’s the little tweaks that really count.

Read more
Digital Trends’ Tech For Change CES 2023 Awards
Digital Trends CES 2023 Tech For Change Award Winners Feature

CES is more than just a neon-drenched show-and-tell session for the world’s biggest tech manufacturers. More and more, it’s also a place where companies showcase innovations that could truly make the world a better place — and at CES 2023, this type of tech was on full display. We saw everything from accessibility-minded PS5 controllers to pedal-powered smart desks. But of all the amazing innovations on display this year, these three impressed us the most:

Samsung's Relumino Mode
Across the globe, roughly 300 million people suffer from moderate to severe vision loss, and generally speaking, most TVs don’t take that into account. So in an effort to make television more accessible and enjoyable for those millions of people suffering from impaired vision, Samsung is adding a new picture mode to many of its new TVs.
[CES 2023] Relumino Mode: Innovation for every need | Samsung
Relumino Mode, as it’s called, works by adding a bunch of different visual filters to the picture simultaneously. Outlines of people and objects on screen are highlighted, the contrast and brightness of the overall picture are cranked up, and extra sharpness is applied to everything. The resulting video would likely look strange to people with normal vision, but for folks with low vision, it should look clearer and closer to "normal" than it otherwise would.
Excitingly, since Relumino Mode is ultimately just a clever software trick, this technology could theoretically be pushed out via a software update and installed on millions of existing Samsung TVs -- not just new and recently purchased ones.

Read more
AI turned Breaking Bad into an anime — and it’s terrifying
Split image of Breaking Bad anime characters.

These days, it seems like there's nothing AI programs can't do. Thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence, deepfakes have done digital "face-offs" with Hollywood celebrities in films and TV shows, VFX artists can de-age actors almost instantly, and ChatGPT has learned how to write big-budget screenplays in the blink of an eye. Pretty soon, AI will probably decide who wins at the Oscars.

Within the past year, AI has also been used to generate beautiful works of art in seconds, creating a viral new trend and causing a boon for fan artists everywhere. TikTok user @cyborgism recently broke the internet by posting a clip featuring many AI-generated pictures of Breaking Bad. The theme here is that the characters are depicted as anime characters straight out of the 1980s, and the result is concerning to say the least. Depending on your viewpoint, Breaking Bad AI (my unofficial name for it) shows how technology can either threaten the integrity of original works of art or nurture artistic expression.
What if AI created Breaking Bad as a 1980s anime?
Playing over Metro Boomin's rap remix of the famous "I am the one who knocks" monologue, the video features images of the cast that range from shockingly realistic to full-on exaggerated. The clip currently has over 65,000 likes on TikTok alone, and many other users have shared their thoughts on the art. One user wrote, "Regardless of the repercussions on the entertainment industry, I can't wait for AI to be advanced enough to animate the whole show like this."

Read more