B737 Week - 50th Anniversary

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This week 50 years ago.... on April 9th 1967 to be precise .... the B737 flew for the very first time and some 2 years after its launching by BOEING.

Departing from Boeing Field, Seattle, Washington, in the USA, the maiden flight on the B737 was commanded by BOEING's Director Of flight Operations and Chief Test Pilot Brien WYGLE, and with Lew WALLICK acting as copilot for this historic flight.

On it's first ever flight the aircraft .... B737-100, N73700, L/N # 1, C/N # 19437 .... remained airborne over some 2 hours and 30 minutes prior to landing at Paine Field, Washington, and from where all future flight testing later proceeded in advance of the B737-100's FAA certification on December 15th 1967.

"Beautiful Handling .... Very Nimble" .... and "Very Responsive" .... were the test crews enthusiastic acclamations of this smallest member among the BOEING family of civil jetliners .... sentiments which are still echoed today, 50 years later, by B737 pilots all around the world.

Marketed first as the B737-100 (a slightly smaller aircraft than the later -200 .... and its succeeding and progressively larger and more advanced B737-300/-400/-500 .... and more recent hi-tech NG and MAX B737-600/-700/-800/and -900 NG family member developments) .... the B737, in company with both the B727 and B707, enabled BOEING to offer a complete line of civil jetliners tailored for short, medium, and long range airline requirements.

To a say the B737's debut represented the birth of a legend or star would probably be the aviation understatement of the century. Well in excess of 9,400 B737 airframes have been produced by BOEING since 1967. More than 1,200 of the type are airborne around the world at any moment of the day. And the type still remains in production today having evolved to become the greatest success in the history of US civil aircraft production .... if not the worlds best selling twin-jet airliner.

The B737 has been instrumental in the success of airlines around the world .... be it in freight or PAX configuration .... there's little this versatile little aircraft can't accomplish impressively, efficiently, and economically.

Few of the worlds major carriers haven't flown the B737 at some stage of their operational history and since these aircraft first entered service during 1968.

Since 1967 the B737 has played a major role in ensuring BOEING's success and dominance within the world civil aviation market and its internationally respected reputation for quality aerospace products as a "leading plane maker to the world".


B737-200



















B737-300





















B737-400















B737-500











Mark C
AKL/NZ & BOG/CO

[Ian Warren]

Arr yes the prity plane, we should have stuck with Boeing rather the ARBUST, one sim aircraft I do like flying is the Classic Captain Sim 737 200 from Christchurch and all over New Zealand and specific in the historical NAC livery.

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one sim aircraft I do like flying is the Classic Captain Sim 737 200

In that case you may want to be prepared to possibly be "blown away" .... not by any cyclone of the current metrorological sort of national threat though, but rather, by this particular FS storm we're currently brewing up over at HJG ....


http://tonymadgehjg.proboards.com/threa ... aby-boeing


A fair bit of work to do yet tough

Mark C
AKL/NZ & BOG/CO

[Ian Warren]

Now that is really COOKING !

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The B737-200's we're working on will cover both pre and post 1973 configurations .... that's non-ADV as well as ADV aircraft versions featuring their physical variations .... and among which we also hope/intended to be able to include other custom modifications applied to these aircraft such as the gravel kit and Nordam (type) hush-kits.

We're also hoping to be offer the B737-100 as well .... and which will be "a first" among FS freeware .... "IF" we can pull it off .. .and which might prompt some ANSETT NEW ZEALAND livery representation as well.

As for the B737-300/-400/-500/-600/-700/-800/-900 .... we'll try'n grow into these following releae of the early classics

Still "A LOT" of work to be done, so, these a are a while away yet.

Mark C
AKL/NZ & BOG/CO

[Ian Warren]

Mark I'm so lucky to have the 200 Classic from Captain Sim , that is simply gorgeous , course add to that I flew the redifon 737 simulator when it was based in Christchurch in 1983 /84 that was the computer simulation that really gave ya the WOW factor, I was not allowed to land it Cos if I crashed it was to thousands to reprogram the simulator .. I recent years I was giving the controls for well over a hour and on my own .. well most of it at Pacific Simulations , Sean said , bet I couldn't land it into Wigram on my own ... the result was ... &

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I was given a crash on AIR NZ's F-27 simulator at AKL during the mid 80's .... even with the motion system deactivated (just in case I pranged it) the perception/sense of "movement" .... through vision/graphics .... was "very convincing".

Mark C
AKL

[Ian Warren]

Back in the day it was night flying only, showing the street lights and highways and motorways , only slight colour was the runway markings , since as I mention the Pacific Simulations 737-800 , they are quiet incredible even for a non mover, static , there is one in Auckland , the in Christchurch could not keep running so sold overseas .. prob have a total of maybe 10 hours , three visits, two courtsey of Alistair Curnow of NZFF when he was in CHCH , now a Nelson boy. The old F-27 would have been fun tho.