Easter egg in flight path of last 747 delivery flight

Re:Easter egg in flight path of last 747 delivery flight by blantonl on Wednesday February 01, 2023 @04:02PM (#34617683)

This was almost certainly drawn out by hand, waypoints (lat/lon) and turns were plotted and then inputed into the flight management computer, and there is a good chance the plane just flew itself as told.

Although given it was flown at such a lower altitude below 15k feed near Moses Lake (which is where Boeing does a ton of testing at that airport) it's possible the pilots hand flew this by following a pre-plotted magenta line already plotted on a map for them.

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Re:Easter egg in flight path of last 747 delivery flight by px43 on Wednesday February 01, 2023 @04:28PM (#34618078)

They could also just spoof the ADS-B data right?

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Re:Easter egg in flight path of last 747 delivery flight by schoen on Wednesday February 01, 2023 @04:40PM (#34618251)

I doubt their normal on-board systems have a feature to do that, or that the pilots would feel confident in doing so in terms of the FAA's possible reaction.

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Re:Easter egg in flight path of last 747 delivery flight by phendrenad2 on Wednesday February 01, 2023 @10:14PM (#34621580)

If Boeing wants to draw a 747 logo in the sky for the last 747 ever made, the 747, the symbol of american design, and they don't want to actually drive the plane around in loops, I'm sure the FAA would sign off on some foolery. But kudos to them for doing it live.

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Re:Easter egg in flight path of last 747 delivery flight by blantonl on Wednesday February 01, 2023 @04:43PM (#34618283)

that didn't happen. They flew this.

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Re:Easter egg in flight path of last 747 delivery flight by jaywalk on Wednesday February 01, 2023 @04:43PM (#34618287)

From a technical perspective, probably. In reality, absolutely not.

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Re:Easter egg in flight path of last 747 delivery flight by lxgr on Wednesday February 01, 2023 @05:15PM (#34618734)

Given that the area is covered by radar (as well as MLAT SDR coverage), it would be tricky to pull off – and the FAA would probably not find it funny at all.

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Re:Easter egg in flight path of last 747 delivery flight by joncrane on Thursday February 02, 2023 @01:31PM (#34631013)

This is what I was curious about. Presumably ATC wasn't calling out vectors, they were doing it through their own navigation. So did ATC basically give them free movement within a certain box and certain altitude? It looks like they did the moves at about 10,000 feet.

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Re:Easter egg in flight path of last 747 delivery flight by bryanbraun on Friday February 03, 2023 @10:45AM (#34642587)

Yeah, just look at how balanced the design looks. Either they programmed that flight path or the pilot spent a lot of time on an etch-a-sketch growing up.

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