Boeing showed it was on board with the hometown favorite Seattle Seahawks in Sunday’s Super Bowl game with a two-pronged assumption of the role of the team’s 12th member. The Seahawks have one of the game’s noisiest stadiums and the team calls its fans the “12th man” so Boeing ran with the theme when it rolled out a new 747-8 this week sporting team colors and a giant 12 on the tail. However, all, new aircraft have to be test flown and Boeing wasn’t finishedwith its tribute to the team’s participation in the big game.
Whoever programmed the flight management system did a pretty masterful job of describing a perfect 12 over the wide open spaces of southeast Washington. The flight path traced by FlightAware shows refinement over Boeing’s earlier flying art as the two digits are in the font commonly used for numbers on jerseys and other sports gear.
