Your typical flight is a pretty sedentary affair with the vast majority of your time being spent either in level flight or waiting patiently on the tarmac. You’d be forgiven for thinking then that that’s all they’re capable of, transporting people from point A to point B and any deviations from that could spell disaster. In fact many modern airliners are capable of performing many feats you’d think would only be in the realms of jet fighters, albeit in a slightly different fashion. Boeing’s new 787 (called the Dreamliner) may look like your traditional jetliner but below that somewhat plain exterior beats the heart of an aircraft capable of doing some really impressive things:
By far the most impressive maneuvers in the video are the extraordinarily tight turns that it’s able to accomplish, something which just seems impossible given the immense size of the craft. The short duration land and re-take off is equally impressive, especially considering the incredibly tight turn that it performs straight afterwards. Of course performing these kinds of maneuvers with a bunch of people in the plane is ill-advised but it shows that a modern airliner can really move if it has to, something which is critical in times of emergency.
I’d remissed if I didn’t link the equally impressive video of one of Boeing’s first jet liners doing a barrel roll, all the way back in 1955:
