Tag Archive: ad

This is the kind of ad that puts the “fun” in the fundamentals of advertising. As reported on Gizmodo, Boeing -makers of the luxury 787 “Dreamliner” aircraft- recently spent a few million dollars on a long-haul test flight of their new aircraft as part of their final certification process. But in doing so, they took some liberty on the flight path and actually drew the Boeing logo next to the numbers “787″ in the sky. It stretched from Washington to Iowa.

I was trying to wrap my head around this and figure out how much the flight actually cost. It took a bit of internet sleuthing, I obviously need an aviation expert to tell me how I screwed it up:

Jet fuel: $5.50 per gallon (Boeing probably pays less, but its a rough approximate)
Dreamliner fuel efficiency: 100mpg per seat
Dreamliner 787-8 capacity: 250 seats
Flight path length: 9,000+ nautical miles

If I use my simplistic understanding of this, that means they spent  $4,950,000 on gas. HUH?

Anyway, the fuel cost is somewhat immaterial when appreciating the advertising here because they had to take the flight regardless of route. I think its great to see such a large and formal corporation have a bit of fun and get free publicity in the process. Hopefully, the pilots, engineers, flight coordinators, and the flightpath tracking company (FlightAware) had fun with this endeavor.