>>1125719I used to hate the 777, but I can't help but love it. It's every bit of a monster as the 747 was, and is easily the most solid aircraft that I've ever flown, 747 included. The 777 made the best use of 90's CAD technology that it could, but being the 1st largely CAD-designed Boeing airliner, they seem to have played it EXTREMELY conservatively with the weight savings, and the result is a horrifically overbuilt airliner that feels like a flying battleship, like the Firth of Forth bridge with wings. You see this strength in the details too, like the knife-edged tail, the massive main gear, and the cockpit-to-fuselage transition. The folks at Boeing clearly knew they were building a beast, and they reveled in it.
Furthermore, it's powered by the most powerful aircraft engines ever flown (this side of a Saturn V or the Space Shuttle) and a fan stage the diameter of a 757 fuselage never gets old.
Even the cockpit and the interior details have this advanced-yet-conservative vibe to them, and there's nothing that comes anywhere near as close to feeling like a genuinely cyberpunk airliner quite like an OG 777-200 with its high-tech-for-the-90s interior and that cockpit that looks like it was designed by Ron Cobb for the Nostromo.
It's hands-down the bird that I dream of flying, moreso than anything else in the sky right now, short of maybe the 787. Maybe.
