It was not so much skywriting as it was skydoodling.
To pass the time during a routine test flight, a team of Boeing pilots used their own flightpath to draw a giant outline of the very plane they were flying — a 787-8 Dreamliner. The picture they sketched stretched over 22 U.S. states and took 18 hours of flight time to complete.
"The nose is pointing at the Puget Sound region, home to Boeing Commercial Airplanes," the aircraft maker said in a statement.
"The wings stretch from northern Michigan near the Canadian border to southern Texas. The tail touches Huntsville, Alabama," it added.
There's no word on how flight controllers reacted to the rather unique flight path. But the folks at Flightradar24, a flight tracker website, took note when all but the trailing edge of the starboard wing was complete.
This #Dreamliner has been drawing a giant #Dreamliner for 13 hours now!
— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) August 3, 2017
Live link:https://t.co/ltUSXWvJ2a pic.twitter.com/SWe4oaBbqi
And they weren't the only ones to notice as #Dreamliner showed.
Back in February, a team test flying a Boeing 737 Max pulled a similar maneuver, writing the plane's moniker in the sky.
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This isn't the first time @BoeingAirplanes has used an endurance flight test to accomplish a bit of sky art. https://t.co/d6iq77uUxf pic.twitter.com/He8lfwIIxy
— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) August 3, 2017