Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight

On the outside, it may resemble the jetliners you've seen for years. Inside, however, it's a whole new bird. The newest plane in the long and proud Boeing family line is the 777, commonly referred to as the "Triple Seven." This long-range, fuel-efficient twinjet was first delivered in May 1995 to fill a gap in the market between the 747 and 767. It is capable of seating 368 to 386 passengers.

The genesis of the 777 is unique in Boeing history. From the outset, it was designed with cooperation and input from its future customers. Boeing actually had engineering staff from the airlines working with Boeing engineers at the factory. And the 777 is the first airliner ever to be completely designed on computers. Using Computer Aided Three-Dimensional Interactive Applications (CATIA), every system and piece of the plane was created and fitted together on computers before production began. It worked so well that Boeing didn't need to create a full-scale physical mock-up of the airplane. The result was that after laser-aligning the major sections and wings of the real airplane, the port wingtip was a mere 0.001 inch out of alignment. The fuselage was out of alignment by only 0.023 inch.