Note: Don't forget the rollout for the 787 is on July 8, 2007. I plan to go see it for myself. Anyone else is welcome to join me.

Question: Has FedEx or UPS considered using the Dreamlifter? I'm sure it can hold a lot of boxes!

This is another update from James Wallace of the Seattle PI:

The Boeing Co.'s big ugly airplane, the Dreamlifter, delivered the first large section of the company's sleek 787 to the Everett plant Tuesday.

The project milestone signals that final assembly of the first Dreamliner will begin soon.

The modified 747-400 freighter carrying the Dreamliner's horizontal stabilizer arrived from Italy, after a refueling stop in Scotland. The Dreamlifter touched down at Paine Field at 6:32 p.m. About 30 Boeing flight-line employees, some with cameras, came out to watch it land under overcast skies and intermittent rain. News helicopters circled above.

"It's a fantastic airplane," said Azaarpay Mehrdsd, the manager in charge of packaging for airplane services. He watched the plane land with colleague Maegahn Steele, a packaging engineer for the large cargo freighter. Their job is to find ways to protect the cargo inside because the cargo hold is unpressurized.

The horizontal stabilizer -- the winglike structure on the tail of an airplane -- was being unloaded about an hour and a half after the freighter landed. The tail of the Dreamlifter swings open to allow the large 787 sections to be loaded and unloaded easily. The composite tail fin was manufactured by Alenia at its plant in Foggia, Italy, and then trucked to Alenia's plant in Grottaglie, near the port city of Taranto, to be loaded on to the Dreamlifter. The Grottaglie plant is making aft fuselage sections for the 787.

When attached to the 787, the stabilizer will measure 62 feet long. But it arrived in two pieces, along with a center section and two elevators, which are the movable control surfaces that attach to the rear of the stabilizer.

The stabilizer pieces were in a shipping crate measuring 9 feet wide, 42 feet long and 13 feet high. The vertical fin of the 787, which will be attached to the stabilizer and is the only large 787 section being manufactured by Boeing, will be trucked to the Everett plant Friday from Boeing's plant in Frederickson in Pierce County.

The other large 787 sections will arrive over the next few weeks. The composite wings will come from Japan, the forward fuselage from Wichita, Kan., and the aft fuselage from Charleston, S.C.

Boeing's schedule for final assembly is tight. The first plane must be ready for a grand rollout celebration July 8 -- 7/8/07.

That is one ugly plane... it looks like the 380 and 74 tried to reproduce.

Sure something like that would hold alot of boxes but I am sure that big bubble is not a great structure to carry boxes unless they are just big empty light weight boxes.

Vagabond - Not a chance of using this flying box to efficiently move small boxes. Did you notice the refueling stop in Scotland? This kind of critter is for specialty loads like this. They fly slow and burn mega amounts of fuel! Skykng (aero engineer )