Take A 360-Degree Virtual Reality Tour of Boeing's 737 Factory
The Boeing factory tour in Everett, Washington is a must-do for any avgeek visiting the Seattle area. While more than five million visitors have visited the Boeing factory in Everett, Washington, far fewer have had the opportunity to check out the other factory in Renton, 11 miles southeast of Seattle.
That's all going to change now — at least virtually. Boeing has launched "Incredible: The Story of the Boeing Renton Site," an interactive site providing 360-degree-views, videos and photo galleries of the production facility at Renton for the Boeing 737, one of the company's best selling commercial jets (14,146 sold as of April 2017, to be exact).
The tour is divided into five different sections and begins outside the assembly building, where narrated High Definition (HD) video clips show fuselages waiting to be wheeled in for final assembly. Clicking on the icons will show you detailed information and videos of each step of the 10-day process, which in the case below contains a video documenting the 2,000-mile fuselage delivery journey from Wichita, Kansas to the factory in Renton.
The menu panel on the left gives you the option to enter the facility and observe the 737 production line in similar full HD, 360-degree glory. What's really interesting, too, is the final section called "Looking towards the horizon," which brings viewers right down to the flight line at Renton Field, where a new 737 headed to Ryanair is seen taking off for flight tests.
A large part of civil aviation history can be traced back to Boeing's Renton facility — more than 12,000 commercial airliners, or about 30% of the company's fleet flying around the world today were built in Renton. Today, the site is home to the production of the 737, churning out a staggering 47 planes a month, including the latest Boeing 737 MAX-9.
Images courtesy of Boeing.
